x INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 
corrections incident to our more recent information on what I 
had already written in a previous edition, and to explain that 
several editions which bore my name were accompanied with 
some notes, and by illustrations with which I had nothing 
whatever to do. In 1829, when Mr. Constable had proceeded 
so far with his ‘‘ Miscellany,” I was requested to read over and 
add some notes explanatory of various passages in “ Selborne ” 
which he then proposed to publish in his collection. To this 
I agreed, and that edition, with a few supplementary notes 
added to the volume in Mr. Bohn’s “ Standard Library,” are 
all with which I have had any connection whatever. 
There is perhaps no work of the same class that has gone 
through more editions than White’s ‘‘Selborne.” It originally 
appeared in 1789, four years before the author’s death, in the 
then fashionable quarto size ; an octavo edition in two volumes 
was published under the charge of Dr. Aitkin in 1802, to 
which various observations were added from White’s journals; 
and a second quarto edition was again published in 1813, with 
notes by the Rev. John Mitford, several of which are copied 
into the present volume; after these, the edition projected and 
published by Constable in his “ Miscellany” was the first to 
render the work better known and more popularly desired. 
When the disarrangement of Mr. Constable’s affairs took place, 
and the “ Miscellany” had passed into other hands, this edition 
assumed several forms, and was illustrated by woodcuts, some 
of them engraved for it, while some were inserted that had 
previously been used in other works on natural history. The 
demand for the work, however, still continued so great as to 
induce Mr. Van Voost and others to speculate upon fresh re- 
prints, some of them very beautifully illustrated, and the Rev. 
L. Jenyns, Mr. Bennet, and Mr. Jesse, have all contributed 
