MEMOIR. xli 



If there be one author to whom, more than all others, 

 Pennant is indebted for whatever is reliable or interest- 

 ing in his book, particularly that portion which relates 

 to the birds and to some of the rarer quadrupeds, that 

 man is Gilbert White. His original information, so 

 much the result of personal and acute research, addressed 

 in letter after letter, in all the confidence and openness 

 of an honest heart, and with a simple desire to obtain 

 and communicate truth, is used by Pennant, adopted as 

 his own, and printed in some parts almost verbatim from 

 those letters. Do we find here and there, in the impo- 

 sing work of Pennant, a passage which, either in style 

 or originality, is superior to a mere wordy, technical 

 description, the probability is that it was communicated 

 by White. But there is no acknowledgment of his help, 

 no recognition of the debt. Even in the account of the 

 harvest-mouse there is no mention of its discoverer ; in 

 the history of the great bat, for a knowledge of which 

 he was also indebted to White, and in numerous other 

 instances, the man to whom the vain and self-seeking 

 author of the ' British Zoology ' was so greatly indebted 

 is almost wholly ignored. Little did he anticipate, when 

 he was thus availing himself of the simple and original 

 life-histories of one so superior in these qualifications to 

 himself, that his correspondent would be commemorated 

 with ever-increasing admiration and esteem, while his 

 own more pretentious book is only regarded of value 

 because, at the time of its publication, it filled a gap in 

 British natural science, and contained some matter of 

 importance, the best of which was really not his own. 

 It appears that even Gilbert White's generous and un- 

 suspicious mind was not wholly without misgivings as 

 regards this phase of Pennant's character. In one of 



