LETTER XLII. 1 



To the same. 



SELBORNE, March gtA, 1774. 

 EAR SIR, Some future faunist, a man of 

 fortune, will, I hope, extend his visits to 

 the kingdom of Ireland; a new field and 

 a country little known to the naturalist. 

 He will not, it is to be wished, undertake that 

 tour unaccompanied by a botanist, because 

 the mountains have scarcely been sufficiently 

 examined ; and the southerly counties of so mild an island 

 may possibly afford some plants little to be expected within 



1 This letter is interesting as showing the comparatively limited range 

 of ornithologists hardly more than a century ago. Ireland was then a 

 scarcely known country. At the present day every nook of it has been 

 explored, zoologically and botanically, and the stations of every rare 

 species of plant or animal exactly recorded. White was quite right in 

 his expectation that the southern counties would afford some plants little 

 to be expected within the United Kingdom ; the flora of Kerry and 

 Connemara abounds in essentially Spanish nnd Portuguese types. Nothing 

 is more interesting in reading White than to observe the extraordinary 

 difference in the estimate of remoteness which has been brought about 



