PREFACE. 



THE principal object of the Editor, in the notes which 

 he has appended to the natural history in the present 

 edition, has not been to treat at large on the general 

 history of the various objects referred to, which would be 

 wholly superfluous at the present time, when a know- 

 ledge of every branch of British natural science is so 

 readily accessible, but rather to render as correct and 

 complete as lay in his power the text of Gilbert White, 

 with such additions and modifications as have been ob- 

 served in the district since the first publication of his 

 work in short, Gilbert White and Selborne. 



In fulfilling this object, the Editor has carefully culled 

 many local illustrations from those editions which have 

 emanated from men of scientific authority, as the Rev. 

 Leonard Jenyns (now Blomfeeld), the late Sir William 

 Jardine, and especially from one whom he was privileged 

 to call his intimate friend, the late Edward Turner Bennett, 

 who, for the purpose of rendering the notes to his edition 

 as far as possible exhaustive of his subject, paid a visit to 

 the place, and, with his brother and another friend, per- 

 ambulated the district. The result of his perambulations, 

 however, could not, necessarily, bear so much upon the 

 zoology and botany of the neighbourhood as upon its 

 scenery and geography, its physical conditions, its social 



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