INTRODUCTION. 



r | ^HERE is a singular parallel in the popularity of the two old 

 A books, the " Complete Angler " of Isaac Walton, and the 

 "Natural History of Selborne," by the Rev. Gilbert White. This 

 popularity has gone on steadily increasing in both cases, until both 

 books are of that class which everyone has read or is supposed to 

 have read, or, with reference to the coming generation of readers, 

 ought to read. The cause of the esteem in which the two 

 books are held is mainly the same. Honest, manly, and godly in 

 their tone, simple and clear in their style, with no ostentation, 

 clearness and accuracy of observation in those subjects which 

 each particularly affected, and with the charm of enthusiasm, and 

 enthusiasm with respect to the glorious " out of doors," they are 

 models for all succeeding writers on kindred subjects. The 

 Editor of this Volume, when a boy, wrote almost his first essay on 

 White and Walton, little thinking at the time that he would ever 

 have the pleasure of editing both books for the series in which 

 this appears. 



The temptation which besets any Naturalist author who under- 

 takes to edit such a work as this, is to use it as a line on which to 

 hang out his own knowledge of Natural History. Such a course, 

 though pleasant to oneself, is not fair to the original Author. The 

 present Editor has done his best to limit the use of notes (a 

 nuisance at the best) to as few as might be consistent with the 



