PREFACE. Xlll 



parison with those registered at Selborne, South 

 Lambeth,, and Lyndon, in the county of Rutland. 



The author of the observations last mentioned,, 

 those made at Lyndon, (which were continued for 

 more than half a century, and regularly published 

 in the " Philosophical Transactions," being com- 

 municated while he lived by Thomas White, who 

 occasionally added to them the comparative obser- 

 vations made by himself and his brothers,) was 

 Thomas Barker, brother-in-law of our author, 

 through marriage with his sister Ann. A brief 

 account of this gentleman, who was distinguished 

 also as a theological critic and astronomer, will be 

 found in the note at p, 17. 



In the commencement of his tenth letter to Pen- 

 nant, the earliest in date of the entire series, 

 Gilbert White laments the want of neighbours 

 whose studies led them towards the pursuit of 

 natural knowledge. But from his continued cor- 

 respondence with the relatives just enumerated, 

 from his occasional visits to most of them, and 

 from the return of those visits to himself, (for his 

 house, although that of a bachelor, was always open 

 to his family and friends,) he must, in his latter 

 years, have felt this want much less sensibly, than at 

 the period when it was noted as an apology for the 

 slender progress which he then conceived himself 

 to have made in the science. Few men have the 

 good fortune to possess so many near connexions 

 engaged in pursuits so congenial with their own. 



The first edition of "The Natural History and 

 Antiquities of Selborne" a work destined, from 

 the quiet simplicity of its style, the calm benevo- 



