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 ISTatural 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 " Deliciae Florae et Faunse Insubricse^'' 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 Vitse 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. 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 Whitens 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- 
