INTR OD UCTORY OBSER VA TIONS. 



corrections incident to our more .recent information on. what I 

 had already written in a previous edition, and to explain that 

 several editions which bore my name were accompanied with 

 some notes, and by illustrations with which I had nothing 

 whatever to do. In 1829, when Mr. Constable had proceeded 

 so far with his " Miscellany," I was requested to read over and 

 add some notes explanatory of various passages in " Selborne " 

 which he then proposed to publish in his collection. To this 

 I agreed, and that edition, with a few supplementary notes 

 added to the volume in Mr. Bonn's "Standard Library," are 

 all with which I have had any connection whatever. 



There is perhaps no work of the same class that has gone 

 through more editions than White's "Selborne." It originally 

 appeared in 1789, four years before the author's death, in the 

 then fashionable quarto size ; an octavo edition in two volumes 

 was published under the charge of Dr. Aitkin in 1802, to 

 which various observations were added from Whitens journals; 

 and a second quarto edition was again published in 1813, with 

 notes by the Rev. John Mitford, several of which are copied 

 into the present volume ; after these, the edition projected and 

 published by Constable in his " Miscellany " was the first to 

 render the work better known and more popularly desired. 

 When the disarrangement of Mr. Constable's affairs took place, 

 and the " Miscellany'' had passed into other hands, this edition 

 assumed several forms, and was illustrated by woodcuts, some 

 of them engraved for it, while some were inserted that had 

 previously been used in other works on natural history. The 

 demand for the work, however, still continued so great as to 

 induce Mr. Van Voost and others to speculate upon fresh re- 

 prints, some of them very beautifully illustrated, and the Rev. 

 L. Jenyns, Mr. Bennet, and Mr. Jesse, have all contributed 



