xii INTRODUCTION. 



Kindly in speech, getting on well with his neighbours, helping 

 with money and with advice where help was needed, and taking 

 as great an interest in the human affairs of the parish as he did in 

 the bird, animal, and insect life of it. It is not known at what 

 time he turned his attention to the study of Natural History. 

 He was acquainted with many persons of note, and it is by the 

 medium of letters to two of those, Pennant and Daines Barrington, 

 that his work on Natural History was written. The tone of the 

 letters themselves, and the lack of system or arrangement in them, 

 would point to the conclusion that at first White did not intend 

 them for publication, and that when the idea occurred to him, he 

 fortunately did not fuse them into one whole, according to method, 

 but presented them to the \vorldjust as they were written. And 

 this book was his only book. It is clear that he was not smitten 

 with the vanity of authorship. His book was first published, in the 

 fashionable quarto size, in 1789, he then being sixty-nine years 

 of age. The book was a success, and brought him into favourable 

 notice. He is said to have been very nervous at first as to its re- 

 ception by Reviewers ; and in the Gentleman s Magazine is a friendly 

 review, written by his brother Thomas, which is rather amusing. It 

 says : " Contemplative persons see with regret the country more 

 and more deserted every day, as they know that every well-regu- 

 lated family of property, which quits a village to reside in a town, 

 injures the place that is forsaken in many material circumstances. 

 It is with pleasure, therefore, we observe, that so rational an 

 employment of leisure time as the study of nature, promises to 

 become popular ; since whatever adds to the number of rural 

 amusements, and consequently counteracts the allurements of the 

 metropolis, is. on this consideration, of national importance. 



" Most of the local histories which have fallen into our hands 

 have been taken up with descriptions of the vestiges of ancient art 

 and industry, while natural observations have been too much 



