202 Transac tion s . — Zoo logy . 



the body and mind employed, have, under Providence, con- 

 tributed to much hetilth and cheerfuhiess of spirits, even to 

 old age." 



Among his numerous scientific correspondents, one, who 

 then stood prominently, was the celebrated working British 

 naturalist Pennant, who was himself a correspondent of 

 Linnaeus. (Some of the works of Pennant are on our library- 

 shelves : and his name is maintained and recorded among us 

 in this country as that of a botanical genus, in our curious 

 New Zealand forest-tree, Pennantia, so named by Forster.) 

 And in an early letter from White to Pennant he makes a 

 very similar complaint to that which I also drew your atten- 

 tion to in my "Presidential Address" four months ago. 

 White says : "It has been my misfortune never to have had 

 any neighbours whose studies have led them towards the 

 pursuit of natural knowledge ; so that, for want of a com- 

 panion to quicken my industry and sharpen my attention, I 

 have made but slender progress in a kind of information to 

 which I have been attached from my childhood." 



To return. On this subject of the variations in the hooting 

 of owls, White has some shrewd remarks, bearing, I think, on 

 this part of owl-conduct I have just narrated ; though it does 

 not appear that White, or his correspondents, had known the 

 reason or cause of the variations they had noticed in the owl- 

 dialect. White says : "A friend remarks that most of his 

 owls hoot in B flat ; but that one went almost half a note 

 below A. The pipe he tried their notes by was a common 

 half-crown pitch-pipe, such as masters use for the tuning of 

 harpsichords ; it was the common London pitch." And, 

 again, White remarks : "A neighbour of mine, who is said to 

 have a nice ear, remarks that the owls about this village hoot 

 in three different keys — in G flat or F sharp, in B flat, paid A flat. 

 He heard two hooting to each other, the one in A flat and the 

 other in B flat. Query : Do these difi'erent notes proceed 

 from different species, or only from various individuals?" 

 {lac. cit., pp. 234, 235.) 



Other and very interesting remarks by White, on owls, are 

 to be found in his letters. An extract from one in particular 

 I will give you. It is contained in a letter to the Hon. Daines 

 Barrington, whom you may remember hearing of as taking a 

 long journey (in those days) to Mousehole, at the extreme 

 end of Cornwall (close to my native place, and not far from 

 the Land's End), to see and converse with the celebrated old 

 flsherwoman, Dolly Pentreath — said to have been the last 

 person who spoke the ancient Cornish language. White says : 

 " We have had ever since I can remember a pair of white 

 owls that constantly bred under the eaves of this church. 

 As I have paid good attention to the manner of life of these 



