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B10LCX3Y 

 LIBRARY 



WHITE'S "NATURAL HISTORY OF 

 SELBORNE" 



" To view the leaves, thin dancers upon air, 

 Go eddying round, and small birds how they fare ; 

 To mark the structure of a plant or tree, 

 And all fair things of earth, how fair they be." 



JOHN WOODVIL. 



THE stately yew that casts its shade in the old church- 

 yard at Selborne has shed its leaves full many a year, 

 and the swifts have returned to the lichened parish 

 church for upwards of a century, since Gilbert White gave to 

 the world his volume of Natural History. And like the yew 

 that remains forever green, and the swallows that return to 

 dip and turn upon themselves again, his fresh, instructive 

 chronicle continues to delight and its pages to unfold an 

 added charm. 



It has long been enshrined as a classic on the library 

 shelves ; and, while its subtle attraction has been found diffi- 

 cult to analyze, it has nevertheless come to be recognized as 

 one of the immortal books, having nature as its theme, one 

 of those volumes with which the discerning reader can ill 

 afford to be entirely unfamiliar. Indeed, in many minds 

 nature is more or less synonymous with the name of its 

 author, who is regarded as a sort of corollary and supplement 

 to that natural world with which he stood upon such intimate 

 terms of relationship. 



A book on nature, it has been said, is certain to attract 

 readers much as a sportsman attracts attention who enters 

 a public place with a gun upon his shoulder or a string of fish 

 in his hand. Yet books on nature, after all, are no exception 

 in their lasting qualities to those on numerous other subjects, 



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