298 GILBERT WHITE OF SELBOENE 1776 



easily beat Plot: he is too credulous, some times trifling, 

 some times superstitious; and at all times ready to make 

 a needless display, and ostentation of erudition. Your 

 knowledge of physic, chemistry, anatomy, and botany will 

 greatly avail you. The sameness of soil in this county will 

 prove to your disadvantage ; while the variety of Stafford- 

 shire * is prodigious ; Coal, lead, copper, salt, marble, 

 alabaster, fuller's earth, potter's clay, pipe clay, iron, marl, 

 &c. : while we in general have nought but chalk. But then 

 you must get Benjamin to write abroad for the treatise ' De 

 creta,' and make the most of it, as it is so little known. 

 Bishop Tanner f will be of vast use for the religious houses. 

 It is to be lamented that Plot was prevented by death from 

 going on : for he improves vastly in his second history which 

 greatly exceeds his Oxfordshire. We have, you know, an 

 actual survey of Hants which you must get reduced so as 

 to fold into a folio. You should study heraldry, and give 

 the coats of arms of our nobility and gentry ; 'til lately I 

 was not aware how necessary that study is to an antiquarian: 

 it is soon learnt, I think. There are in this county 253 

 parishes, most of which you should see. The Isle of Wight 

 must also come into your plan. 



Time has not permitted me yet to go through half 

 Priestley's Electrical History, but in vol. 1, p. 86, I remark, 

 that D"" Desaguliers proposed the following conjecture con- 

 cerning the rise of vapours. "The air at the surface of 

 water being electrical, particles of water, he thought, 

 jumped to it; then becoming themselves electrical, they 

 repelled both the air and one an other, and consequently 

 ascended into the higher regions of the atmosphere." If 



* Of which county, as well as Oxfordshire, Dr. Robert Plot wrote ' The 

 Natural History.' It is no doubt from these books, which were well known 

 to him, that Gilbert White took his title of 'The Natural History of his 

 native parish. 



t Who wrote * Notitia Monastica.' 



