PREFACE xv 



A third brother, Benjamin, the publisher of the first 

 edition of the present work, was during much of the latter 

 half of the past century the principal publisher of English 

 books on Natural History. On the death of Gilbert he 

 succeeded to the estate 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 publica- 

 tions, most of the works of Ellis, Pennant, Montagu, Latham, 

 Donovan, Andrews, the elder Sowerby, Curtis, Lightfoot, 

 and other well-known naturalists. The house in which the 

 business was carried on was originally distinguished, accord- 

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

 Head, a misreading of which gave rise to a whimsical mis- 

 take on the part of Scopoli, who, in dedicating the several 

 plates of his " Delicise Florae et Faunae Insubricae" to 

 various patrons of natural history, inscribed one of them 

 as published " Auspiciis DD. DD. Beniamini White, et 

 Horatii Head, Bibliopol. Londinensium." It may be added, 

 that in his " Vitas 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 commerciuin 

 litterarium colui," the name of " D. White, ex Gibraltaria." 

 Many passages in the present work prove how highly Sco- 

 poli 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 Fyfield, near Andover, in the county of Hants, whence 

 one of the letters to Daines Barrington is dated, and where, 

 as appears by various references in the course of the volume, 

 a series of meteorological observations were made for com- 

 parison with those registered at Selborne, South Lambeth, 

 and Lyndon, in the county of Rutland. 



In the commencement of his tenth letter to Pennant, the 

 earliest in date of the entire series, Gilbert White laments 

 the want of neighbours whose studies led them towards the 

 pursuit of natural knowledge. But from his continued cor- 



