Birds) of his A History of British Birds (1797), presents a phenological list of 19 birds which are "chiefly selected from Mr. White's Natural History of Selborne, and are arranged nearly in the order of their appearing". The list begins with the wryneck ("Middle of March"), places the cuckoo in the middle of April, and ends with the flycatcher in the middle of May. Charles Darwin read the Natural History as a young man, inspiring him to take "much pleasure in watching the habits of birds" and to wonder "why every gentleman did not become an ornithologist". Sara Losh, too, read the Natural History as part of her "wonderful, varied and advanced [home] education for a young girl". White's Natural History has been continuously in print since its first publication. It was long held ("apocryphally", according to White's biographer, Richard Mabey) to be the fourth-most published book in the English language after the Bible, the works of Shakespeare, and John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. White's frequent accounts in The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne of his tortoise Timothy, inherited from his aunt, form the basis for a variety of literary mentions. Verlyn Klinkenborg's book, Timothy; or, Notes of an Abject Reptile (2006) is based wholly on that reptile, as is Sylvia Townsend Warner's The Portrait of a Tortoise (1946). The tortoise also finds its way into science, as its species, Testudo whitei (Bennett 1836), long thought to be a synonym of Testudo graeca, has been rediscovered in Algeria. Various writers have commented on the book. The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge called it "This sweet delightful book". The novelist Virginia Woolf observed that "By some apparently unconscious device .. a door [is] left open, through which we hear distant sounds." Among poets, Edward Thomas wrote that "In this present year, 1915, at least, it is hard to find a flaw in the life he led" while W. H. Auden stated that "Selfishly, I, too, would have plumbed to know you: I could have learned so much." The naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough called White "A man in total harmony with his world." The novelist Roald Dahl has the main character in his short story "The Visitor" read the book. The writer and zookeeper Gerald Durrell commented in The Amateur Naturalist that White "simply observed nature with a sharp eye and wrote about it lovingly." Notes References Sources External links Versions