INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. x1 
their share to the explanation of White’s letters, and have been 
assisted by some of the first men of the day in regard to such 
subjects as did not so immediately form a portion of their own 
studies, and we owe to Messrs. Bell and Owen, Yarrel and 
Herbert, many useful and instructive notes. The call now for 
another edition of the ‘‘ Natural History of Selborne,” after so 
much has been illustrated and written about it, shows the 
continued estimation in which the work is held, and the 
confidence of the publishers in its value. What is the cause of 
this run after the correspondence of a country clergyman? 
Just that it is the simple recording of valuable facts as they 
were really seen or learned, without embellishment except as 
received from truth, and without allowing the imagination to 
ramble and assume conclusions the exactness of which it had 
not proved. He at the same time kept steadily in view the 
moral obligation upon himself, as a man and minister, to 
benefit his fellow-creatures by impressing upon them the 
beneficence of the Creator, as exemplified in His works, and 
the contentment and cheerfulness of spirit which their study 
under proper restrictions imparts to the mind. And of this 
man we have handed down scarcely any biographical recollec- 
tions, except what can be gathered from a short sketch by his 
brother, or that may be interspersed among his letters ; and 
these are very few, as he was not given to write of himself or 
his private affairs. Gilbert White, at one time the recluse, and 
almost obscure vicar of Selborne, had no biographer to record 
all the little outs and ins of his quiet career ; he was not thought 
of until his letters pointed him out as a man of observation ; 
and it is only since they have been edited and re-edited that 
every source has been ransacked, with the hope of finding 
some memoranda of the worthy vicar and naturalist. 
