I3S 



PREFACE 



THIS book was planned and written with the purpose 

 of introducing young people to Gilbert White's 

 " Natural History of Selborne," and to encourage the 

 study of that immortal work. 



From earliest days of reading, when I learned to 

 love this book, though I could not understand it, and 

 would absorb myself for hours and days in its pages 

 (pardoning, for the sake of the information, as Gilbert 

 White once asked his original reader to do, the " quaint 

 and magisterial air," and reading on with ever new 

 delight at his ideas ideas of " everything that is rural, 

 verdurous, and joyous " ), I have always thought that 

 a child's " Selborne " was needed : in the same way 

 as was a child's Bible, and a " Tales from Shakespeare " 

 not only an expurgated edition, but one with a simple 

 running commentary of notes and explanations. The 

 book is not suitable for young readers, or readers young 

 in the study of the natural history of an English 

 countryside. The quaint and sometimes magisterial 

 air of some of the letters, their geography and their 

 geology, make them hard reading ; the book is like a 

 country ringed about by rugged mountain barriers 

 which keep many travellers from the delectable valleys 

 of the interior. Yet how full of delight for all young 

 lovers of Nature, how full of the sense of " everything 

 that is rural, verdurous, and joyous," like the field- 

 cricket's song, are selected passages ! In almost every 

 page is some glowing passage, an observation, an 

 anecdote, a piece of curious reasoning, of eternal truth 

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