Xii PREFACE. 



at Selborne, and transferred his business to his 

 second son, John, who continued it until within a 

 few years of the present time. From this estab- 

 lishment emanated, among many other important 

 publications, most of the works of Ellis, Pennant, 

 Montagu, Latham, Donovan, Andrews, the elder 

 Sowerby, Curtis, Lightfoot, Lambert, and Smith. 

 The house in which the business was carried on 

 was originally distinguished, according to the 

 fashion of the times, by the sign of the Horace's 

 Head, a misreading of which gave rise to a whim- 

 sical mistake on the part of Scopoli, who, in dedi- 

 cating the several plates of his "Deliciae Florae et 

 Faunae Insubricae" to various patrons of natural 

 history, inscribed one of them as published u Aus- 

 piciis DD. DD. Beniamini Withe, et Horatii Heal, 

 Bibliopol. Londinensium." It may be added, that 

 in his " Vitae suae Vices," published at the end of 

 the third and last part of the work just quoted, the 

 same writer enumerates among the "eruditi viri 

 cum quibus commercium litterarium colui," the 

 name of "D. Withe, ex Gibraltaria." Many pas- 

 sages in the present work prove how highly Scopoli 

 was esteemed by our author, with whose family 

 these circumstances, trivial as they are, serve in 

 some degree to connect his name. 



In Gilbert White's diaries mention is also made 

 of a " brother Harry." He too was in the church, 

 and rector of Fy field, near Andover, in the county 

 of Hants, whence one of the letters to Daines Bar- 

 rington is dated, and where, as appears by various 

 references in the course of the volume, a series of 

 meteorological observations were made for com- 



