22 GILBERT WHITE OF SELBORNE 



even to his eldest brother Gilbert as a naturalist. 

 He was elected to a (Surrey) scholarship at Corpus 

 Christi College, Oxford, where he was admitted on 

 March 12th, 174f, and took his B.A. degree in 1749. 

 He was ordained in 1753 and became a curate at 

 Barnet and in London. In 1754 he married, and 

 in 1756 proceeded to Gibraltar as chaplain to the 

 garrison there. While abroad he maintained a 

 constant correspondence with his brother Gilbert, 

 and towards the end of his sojourn on the Rock 

 wrote to and received some letters from Linnaeus 

 upon natural history subjects, concerning which he 

 accumulated much material. Returning to England 

 in 1772, he became, on the presentation of the 

 Archbishop of Canterbury, Vicar of Blackburn, and 

 there prepared his natural history notes and caused 

 illustrations to be made with a view to their publi- 

 cation, which, however, never took place. ^ He died, 

 after a long illness, at Blackburn, in November, 

 1780. After his death his widow came to reside 

 at Selborne with her brother-in-law, whom she out- 

 lived. 



Of another brother, Francis, there is but little 

 to say. He was born at East Harting, Sussex, on 

 March 3rd, 172f. '^Brother Franky," in London, 

 is mentioned in a letter of Gilbert White's written 

 in 1746. In a pedigree of the family drawn up by 

 James White (son of Benjamin) and corrected by 



• The probable fate of the work on the Fauna of Gibraltar is discussed 

 injra, vol. ii. p. 66. 



