IN the garden of his Hampshire vicarage the Rev Gilbert White (1720-93), whose observations of nature were collected in the classic The Natural History of Selborne, kept a tortoise.
Named Timothy, she was proved after her death to have been a female, whose shell is still preserved in the Natural History Museum. Verlyn Klinkenborg has imagined the notes that Timothy might have made on White and his world.
"I live under a tuft of hepaticas Every day Mrs Rebecca Snooke appears.
Towering overhead... astonishing headgear, especially on sunny days.
Rustling and soaring as she walks. Impossible at first to tell just how she is propelled.'' A captivating if inconsequential diversion, improbably conceived and written by an upstate New Yorker.
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