INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 



their share to the explanation of White's letters, and have been 

 assisted by some of the first men of the day in regard to such 

 subjects as did not so immediately form a portion of their own 

 studies, and we owe to Messrs. Bell and Owen, Yarrel and 

 Herbert, many useful and instructive notes. The call now for 

 another edition of the " Natural History of Selborne," after so 

 much has been illustrated and written about it, shows the 

 continued estimation in which the work is hel'd, and the 

 confidence of the publishers in its value. What is the cause of 

 this run after the correspondence of a country clergyman? 

 Just that it is the simple recording of valuable facts as they 

 were really seen or learned, without embellishment except as 

 received from truth, and without allowing the imagination to 

 ramble and assume conclusions the exactness of which it had 

 not proved. He at the same time kept steadily in view the 

 moral obligation upon himself, as a man and minister, to 

 benefit his fellow-creatures by impressing upon them the 

 beneficence of the Creator, as exemplified in His works, and 

 the contentment and cheerfulness of spirit which their study 

 under proper restrictions imparts to the mind. And of this 

 man we have handed down scarcely any biographical recollec- 

 tions, except what can be gathered from a short sketch by his 

 brother, or that may be interspersed among his letters ; and 

 these are very few, as he was not given to write of himself or 

 his private affairs. Gilbert White, at one time the recluse, and 

 almost obscure vicar of Selborne, had no biographer to record 

 all the little outs and ins of his quiet career ; he was not thought 

 of until his letters pointed him out as a man of observation ; 

 and it is only since they have been edited and re-edited that 

 every source has been ransacked, with the hope of finding 

 some memoranda of the worthy vicar and naturalist. 



