162 GILBERT WHITE OF SELBOENE 1768 



books and no soul to communicate my doubts and 

 discoveries to." He concludes by wishing Mr. Banks 

 ''all health and a great deal of success and satisfac- 

 tion in your laudable pursuits, a prosperous voyage 

 and a safe return." 



Keturning to the unpublished passages from the 

 original letter to Pennant; Letter XVII of June 

 1 8th (lOth in the original letter), 1768, continued — 



"I am now to return you my warmest thanks for your 

 agreeable present of the 'British Zoology,'* which I accept 

 with great satisfaction as a token of your friendship : and 

 shall look upon your work as an ornament to my little shelf 

 of natural history. As far as I have been able to compare 

 any animals with your descriptions, I find them just and 

 apt; and such as may readily help the reader to ascertain 

 any quadrupede or bird that falls in his way." 



On August 17th, 1768, what became Letter 



* This was the secoTid edition, of which, at Benjamin White's proposal, 

 Pennant (see his 'Literary Life,' p. 8) this year published with him two 

 volumes containing the quadrupeds and birds — a third volume, including 

 the reptiles and fishes, appearing in 1769. In the Preface the author grate- 

 fully acknowledges the information received among others from Gilbert 

 White, and in the Appendix (p. 498), which must have been written in 

 1767, gives an account, almost in the latter's words, of the " non-descript 

 species [of field-mouse] communicated to us this year by the rev. Mr. White 

 of Selborne, Hants," besides mentioning him (p. 500) in connection with the 

 tame bat and the falcon, as related by him in his letters of August- 

 November, 1767. A fourth and supplementary volume (often called the 

 "third edition") was published three years later (see note, p. 176, to letter of 

 12th May, 1770). Herein Pennant again refers to Gilbert White giving his 

 observations on migrating swallows seen on Michaelmas Day, 1768. 



The key to nearly all the subsequent letters to Pennant is that White was 

 continually furnishing information additional to that contained in the second 

 edition of the ' British Zoology.' This information was eventually incor- 

 porated in the ^'fourth'* edition, published in two forms (4to and 8vo) in 

 1776, of which Gilbert White, while in London, himself corrected the proofs 

 (see note to letter to John White of 26th February of that year). — A. N. 



