Introduction xxvii 



He refused more than one offer of a college living, preferring his 

 modest curacy at Faringdon, and the quiet ease of a lettered 

 naturalist to parochial distractions. But it would seem from a 

 curious passage in the "-Antiquities of Selborne" that before 

 settling in HampsJiire lie must have passed some time practically 

 as a gentleman farmer in the Isle of Ely. 



Such are the chief dates in the Hampshire parsons simple 

 annals. White )ias left for us an account of his life, however, 

 far more graphic and valuable than any mere formal biography 

 an account which more than makes up for the want of details 

 as to his external history. That history, as his nephew wrote, 

 "passed tranquil and serene, with scarcely any other vicissitudes 

 than those of the seasons." Some tune about the year 1767, as it 

 chanced, he entered into a brisk correspondence with Thomas 

 Pennant, a wealthy Welsh naturalist, the author of the "British 

 Zoology" with regard to the habits of certain birds and animals. 

 These letters, one may conjecture, were begun without any thought 

 of ultimate publication ; the earliest in date among them seem to 

 be written offhand, without order or method, as mere rough 

 memoranda of facts and observations. Letter X., as at present 

 arranged, is probably the first that really passed through the 

 post between the two naturalists ; one may gather from it that 

 Pennant had asked a few questions of White, and that White 

 replied to them seriatim, in the order in which they were written. 

 From this casual beginning, a regular correspondence ensued, 

 carried on for a long time without thought of publication. But 

 gradually another of his correspondents, the Hon. Daines Bar- 

 rington, seems to have suggested that so much valuable matter 

 ought not to be locked up in private letters ; and thenceforth 

 White would appear to have begun aiming at a more regular 

 style and at something approaching orderly treatment. A letter 

 to Pennant in 1771, indicates the probability that the Welsh 

 naturalist too had urged him to publish. Unless I mistake, it 

 is possible to detect in the letters as they proceed, at least from 



