it mou.se 



LETTER XLII. 1 



To the same. 



SELBORNE, March tyh, 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 



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 and Portuguese types. 

 Nothing is more interesting in reading White than to observe the extraordinary 



