Vol. xxxiii.] 18 



Barrington was the author of ' Miscellanies/ * London 

 1781, in which, on p. 223, he refers to White as 'that 

 ingenious and observant naturalist/ Barrington e with his 

 usual perversity, chose to disbelieve in the migration of the 

 swallow kind,' and ' it seems to have been his influence that 

 from time to time disturbed White's mind on the subject/ 



Barrington had published, in his ' Miscellanies,' an article 

 ( On the Torpidity of the Swallow Tribe when they disappear/ 

 but White appears to have always been inclined to credit 

 the hibernation of these birds (cf. Letter X. to Pennant, 

 August 4, 1767, and ' A Garden Kalendar/ August 25, 26, 

 1765), and he maintained the error to the end ; thus, writing 

 to Marsham (Bell, vol. ii. p. 302) shortly before his death, 

 he states : ' I did not write the letter in the Gent[leman's] 

 Mag[azine] against the torpidity of swallows ; nor would it 

 be consistent with what I have sometimes asserted so 

 to do.' 



It is uncertain when Gilbert White first thought of 

 publishing the letters to Pennant and Barrington, the result 

 of his constant and careful observations, in book form. 

 Early in 1770 Barrington must have urged him to do so, 

 since White refers to c the proposal you make about my 

 drawing up an account of the animals in this neighbour- 

 hood/ and continues ' for it is no small undertaking for a 

 man unsupported and alone to begin a natural history from 

 his own autopsia ! ' (Bell, vol. i. p. 126) . And writing to 

 Pennant 19th July of the next year he says : i As to any 

 publication in this way of my own, I look upon it with 

 great diffidence, finding that I ought to have begun it 

 twenty years ago.' In 1774, writing to his brother John, 

 he says (Bell, vol. ii. p. 28), ' Out of all my journals I think 

 I might collect enough and such a series of incidents as 

 might pretty well comprehend the Natural History of this 

 district, especially as to the ornithological part, and I have 

 moreover half a century of letters on the^same subject.' 

 But by the following year he would seem to have made up 



* lie also wrote ' Observations on the Statutes,' a book well worth 

 the attention of the curious. 



