Dear Sir

¹

I am to acknowledge my tardiness in answering your kind Letter of June the 9^th I have to plead, business, workmen, & company: & yet I ought not to have been silent for so many weeks.

In a former letter of May the 9:^th you mention a thought of a periodical publication, that shall receive the various pieces of natural history that otherwise might perish. Not being conversant in such undertakings I am little of a judge whether such a pamphlet would be likely to take: & am fearful that the very occasion of your magazine may be the cause of it’s not succeeding: for amidst the din & clamour of party Rage, the still small voice of Philosophy will, I fear, be little attended to. However, if you think such a publication expedient, you will no doubt get considerable assistance from your friends; & I shall be ready to advice my mite: but then I shall expect you to be very charitable in your allowances, & to grant that my mite in one respect is equal to larger contributions, asit is all my stock of Knowledge.

It gives me satisfaction to find that my account of the ouzel migration pleases you. You put a very shrewd question when you ask me how I know that their autumnal migration is southwards? Was not candor & openness the very life of natural history, I should pass over this quœre, just as a sly commentator does a crabbed passage in a Classic: but common Ingenuousness obliges me to confess, not without some degree of shame that I only reasoned in that case from analogy. For as all other autumnal birds migrate from the northwards to us to partake of our milder winters; & return to the northwards again when the rigorous cold abates: so I concluded that the ring-ouzels did the same as well as their congeners the fieldfares; & especially as ring-ouzels are known to haunt mountainous countries.

I have taken a great deal of pains about your Salicaria, & mine, with a white stroke over its Eye, & a tawney rump. I have surveyed it alive & dead, & have procured several specimens; & am persuaded myself (& trust you will soon be convinced of the same) that it is no more nor less than the Passer arundinaceus minor of Ray. This Bird by some means or other seems to be entirely omitted in the Brit: zoology; & one reason probably was beause it is so strangely classed in Ray, who ranges it among his Picis affines². It ought no doubt to have gone among his Aviculæ caudâ unicolore³: & among your slender-billed small birds of the same division. Linnæus might with great propriety have put it into his genus of Motacillæ: & the Motacilla salicaria of his Fauna Sueica seems to come the nearest to it. It is no uncommon bird, haunting the sides of ponds & rivers where there is no covert; & the reeds & sedge of moors. The country people in some places call it the sedge-bird. It sings incessantly night & day during the breeding time, imitating the note of a sparrow, a swallow, a skie lark: & has a strange hurrying manner in it’s song. My Specimens correspond most minutely to the description of your fen-salicaria shot near Revesby. Mr: Ray has given an excellent characteristic of it when he says, “Rostrum & pedes in hâc aviculâ multo majores sunt quàm pro corporis ratione⁴.”

I have got you the egg of an Oedicnemus, which was picked_^^up in a fallow on the naked ground: there were two, but the finder inadvertantly crush’d one with his foot before he saw them.

If you will look into Mr: Cateut on the deluge you will find his expedient for furnishing America with animals from the shores of Africa.

My Brother⁵ sent me your book of fishes⁶, which proves very entertaining & edifying: & I wish that I was better acquainted with the subject: but having never lived near great waters, or the sea, my opportunities of prying into that branch of Nature have been few. When I wrote to you_^^{on reptiles7} last year I wish I had not forgot the faculty that snakes have of stinking se defendendo.

I knew a Gent: who kept a tame snake, which was in it’s person as sweet as any animal while in a good humour, & unalarmed: but as soon as a stranger or a dog or cat came in, it fell to hissing, & fill’d the room with such nauseous affluvia, as render’d it hardly supportable. Thus the Squanck or Stonck of Ray’s synop: quarter:is an innocuous & sweet animal: but when press’d hard by dogs & men it can eject such a most fetid & pestilent smell and excrement, that nothing can be more horrible.

When an Opportunity offers I shall be glad to look into y^r Indian Zoology.

Mr: Skinner of C:C:C: & Mr: Sheffield of Worcester Coll: have lately been with me for a fortnight: & are the only Naturalists that I have ever yet had the pleasure of seeing at my house. They are both excellent Botanists: & the latter makes a very rapid Progress in Entomology. There was great satisfaction in walking but with these men: because no bird, plant or insect came before them unascertain’d. One day we shot a Tringia ocrophus, which is a very rare bird in these parts. Mr Sheffield tells me you have an elegant place at Downing; large & noble oaks before your house & beautiful rills & falls of water among them tumbling from slope to slope into the sea.

At the time that you were to be on your journey, I took notice that we had most beautiful weather here in the south: I hope the same serene season attended you in the most northerly parts of this kingdom; & that you are returned safe from Scotland, full fraught with curiosities & a fresh fund of natural knowledge.

A Gent: sent me lately a fine specimen of the Lanius minor cinerascens cum macula in Scapulis albâ Raii, which is a bird that at the time of y^r: publishing y^r two first vol: of British zool: I find you had not seen. You have described_^^it well from Edward’s drawing.

There appears a Comet nightly (having a tail of about six degrees in length) in the constellation of Aries, between the 24: 29: & 51 starts of that constellation in the English catalogue.

Having been lately very much hurried by a good deal of correspondence, & a good deal of other writing I was glad to make use of an Amanuensis.⁸

ⁱ⁹

I am, with the greatest esteem your most obedient, & obliged Servant,

Gil: White.

---

Editorial notes

1. The majority of this letter is written in the hand of an amenuensis (most likely Gilbert White's nephew John White (known as Jack), son of Gilbert Whites brother John
2. this means within the woodpecker group, rather than referring to a specific species
3. Translation: birds with a single coloured tail
4. Translation: The beak and feet in this bird are much larger than they are for the size of the body
5. Benjamin White
6. volume IV
7. correction here is in White's hand rather than that of the amenuensis
8. This note and sign off in Gilbert White's hand rather than the amenuensis
9. addition made by Thomas Pennant