What the tortoise knew

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TIMOTHY; OR, NOTES OF AN ABJECT REPTILE

By Verlyn Klinkenborg

Knopf, $16.95, 177 pages

In the late-18th century, curate and naturalist Gilbert White took to writing a natural history of his parish. Within the thick, patchwork volume that became "The Natural History of Selborne" -- in print to this day -- are his close observations of plants and animals, time and seasons and gentle speculations about how the world works. In it also is the following passage, which serves as the preface to Verlyn Klinkenborg's remarkable new book:

A very intelligent and observant person has assured me that, in the former part of his life, keeping but one horse, he happened also on a time to have but one solitary hen. These two incongruous animals spent much of their time together in a lovely orchard where they saw no creature but each other. By degrees an apparent regard began to take place between these two sequestered individuals. The fowl would approach the quadruped with notes of complacency, rubbing herself gently against his legs: while the horse would look down with satisfaction and move with the greatest caution and circumspection lest he should trample on his diminutive companion. Thus, by mutual good offices each seemed to console vacant hours of the other . . .

Gilbert White, The Natural History of Selborne, 1789