page_title: The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne
section_title: Letters to the Hon. Daines Barrington
hierarchical_section_title: The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne / Structure / The Natural History of Selborne / Letters to the Hon. Daines Barrington
caption_attribution_description: English: 1795 portrait engraving of the English lawyer and naturalist Daines Barrington (1727-1800), from a painting made in 1770.
context_page_description: The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, or just The Natural History of Selborne is a book by English parson-naturalist Gilbert White. It was first published in 1789 by his brother Benjamin. It has been continuously in print since then, with nearly 300 editions up to 2007.
  The book was published late in White's life, compiled from a mixture of his letters to other naturalists—Thomas Pennant and Daines Barrington; a 'Naturalist's Calendar' comparing phenology observations made by White and William Markwick of the first appearances in the year of different animals and plants; and observations of natural history organized more or less systematically by species and group. A second volume, less often reprinted, covered the antiquities of Selborne. Some of the letters were never posted, and were written for the book.
  White's Natural History was at once well received by contemporary critics and the public, and continued to be admired by a diverse range of nineteenth and twentieth century literary figures. His work has been seen as an early contribution to ecology and in particular to phenology.
context_section_description: There are 66 letters to the lawyer Daines Barrington  (1727–1800), occupying half the book. Letter 1, on summer birds of passage, is dated 30 June 1769; Letter 66, on thunderstorms, is dated 25 June 1787. The Barrington letters therefore largely overlap the time frame of those to Pennant, but began and ended somewhat later. It was Barrington who suggested to White that he should write a book from his observations; although Pennant had been corresponding with White for a while, he was relying on White for natural history information for his own books, and, suggests White's biographer Richard Mabey, must have wanted White as a continuing source of information, not as a rival author. Barrington, on the other hand, liked to theorize about the natural world, but had little interest in making observations himself, and tended to accept claimed facts uncritically.
  A character in some of the letters is a tortoise:
  The old tortoise, that I have mentioned in a former letter, still continues in this garden, and retired underground about the 20th of November, and came out again for one day on the 30th : it lies now buried in a wet swampy border under a wall facing to the south, and is enveloped at present in mud and mire !
  Letter 65 describes the summer of 1783 as:
  an amazing and portentous one, and full of horrible phenomena; for, besides the alarming meteors and tremendous thunderstorms that affrighted and distressed the different counties of this kingdom, the peculiar haze, or smoky fog, that prevailed for many weeks in this island, and in every part of Europe, and even beyond its limits, was a most extraordinary appearance, unlike anything known within the memory of man ... The sun, at noon, looked as blank as a clouded moon, and shed a rust-coloured ferruginous light on the ground, and floors of rooms; but was particularly lurid and blood-coloured at rising and setting. All this time the heat was so intense that butcher's meat could hardly be eaten on the day after it was killed ...
  This was caused by the eruption of the Laki volcano in Iceland between 8 June 1783 and February 1784, killing up to a quarter of the people of Iceland and spreading a haze as far as Egypt.
caption: Correspondent: the English lawyer and naturalist Daines Barrington (1727–1800)
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