Gilbert White was already a middle-aged man when he was drawn into correspondence by Thomas Pennant, a naturalist younger than himself, who had undertaken to produce, in four volumes folio, a work on British Zoology for the production of which he was radically unfitted.  It has been severely, but justly, pointed out that wherever Pennant rises superior, either in style or information, to his own dead level of pompous inexactitude, he is almost certainly quoting from a letter of Gilbert White’s.  Yet no acknowledgment of the Selborne parson is vouchsafed; “even in the account of the harvest-mouse,” says Professor Bell, “there is no mention of its discoverer.”  Nevertheless, so rudimentary was scientific knowledge one hundred and thirty years ago, that Pennant’s pretentious book was received with acclamation.  The patient man at Selborne sat and smiled, even courteously joining with mild congratulations in the rounds of applause.  Fortunately Pennant did not remain his only correspondent.  The Hon. Daines Barrington was a man of another stamp, not profound, indeed, but enthusiastic, a genuine lover of research, and a gentleman at heart.  He quoted Gilbert White in his writings, but never without full acknowledgment.  Other friends followed, and the recluse of Selbourne became the correspondent of Sir Joseph Banks, of Dr. Chandler, and of many other great ones of that day now decently forgotten.

Meanwhile, he was growing old.  Any sharp winter might have cut him off, as he trudged along through the deep lanes of his rustic parish.  Early in 1770 Daines Barrington, tired of seeing his friend the mere valet to so many other pompous intellects, had proposed to him to “draw up an account of the animals of Selborne.”  Gilbert White put the fascinating notion from him.  “It is no small undertaking,” he replied, “for a man unsupported and alone to begin a natural history from his own autopsia.”  Pennant seems to have joined in the suggestion of Barrington, for White says (in a letter, dated July 19, 1771, which did not see the light for more than a century after it was written): 

“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; but if I was to attempt anything, it should be something of a Nat:  history of my native parish, an Annus historico-naturalis, comprising a journal of one whole year, and illustrated with large notes and observations.  Such a beginning might induce more able naturalists to write the history of various districts, and might in time occasion the production of a work so much to be wished for, a full and compleat nat:  history of these kingdoms.”