xviii PREFACE. 



correspondent of an observer like Gilbert White. The 

 legal studies which he had originally cultivated as a pro- 

 fessional duty, and in which he had been so successful as to 

 have merited the office of recorder of Bristol, and to have 

 become subsequently a Welsh judge, were eventually laid 

 aside by him, although not until after they had fostered in 

 him an attachment to antiquarian pursuits which he retained 

 through life so strongly as to entitle him to be distinguished 

 among his fellow-students in that department of knowledge 

 as a vice-president of the Society of Antiquaries. To the 

 " Transactions " of that body he was a frequent contributor. 

 He also made numerous communications to the Royal 

 Society, which were printed in the " Philosophical Trans- 

 actions/' Many of them were afterwards republished by 

 himself in a separate form, under the title of " Miscellanies ; " 

 a work alluded to with satisfaction by our historian in his 

 Letter LI. In his essays Barrington availed himself freely 

 of the information imparted to him by White, whose autho- 

 rity he repeatedly quotes, and whose merits as a "well 

 read, ingenious, and observant " naturalist he is ever ready 

 to acknowledge. 



A large proportion of the essays in the ' ' Miscellanies " 

 are on subjects of natural history; and in many of them 

 Daines Barrington was the advocate of views directly opposed 

 to those of our author's other correspondent, Pennant. 

 Thus, for instance, while Pennant felt a full conviction as 

 to the migration of many birds, Barrington was most 

 sceptical on the subject; and it is scarcely to be doubted 

 that his letters to Gilbert White tended to keep alive and 

 to increase the suspicions which the historian of Selborne 

 always entertained that the little creatures whose presence 

 delighted him during the summer, were still at hand, though 

 hidden from him, in the winter. Another point on which 

 his two correspondents disagreed was as to the authority 

 which they attributed to Ray and to Linnaeus ; and White 

 was evidently quite aware of the difference of their feelings 

 on this subject, humouring them so far as to accommo- 

 date himself to the wishes of each when addressing him in 

 particular. When sending to Pennant, in his Letter XVI., 



