16 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 

 1 only know that 



Inch. Hund. 



From May i, 1779, to the end of the year there fell . 28 37 ! 



27 32 



3 7i 



. 50 26! 



33 7i 



33 80 



3i 55 



39 57 l 



The village of Selborne, and large hamlet of Oak- 

 hanger, with the single farms, and many scattered houses 

 along the verge of the forest, contain upwards of six 

 hundred and seventy inhabitants. 



A STATE of the PARISH of SELBORNE, taken OCTOBER 4, 1783. 



The number of tenements or families, 136. 



The number of inhabitants in the street is 313 )_ Total 676 ; near five inhabitants to each tene- 

 In the rest of the parish . . . 363 ) ment. 



In the time of the Rev. Gilbert White, Vicar, who died in 1727-8, the number of inhabitants 

 was computed at 500.2 



1 In Bennett's edition the summary of the rainfall is continued up to the year 

 1793, from which it appears that in the last-mentioned year 48.56 was the 

 measurement, and 40 inches is exceeded in three instances, though none equal 

 Gilbert White's record for 1782. Professor Bell observes: "That the local 

 circumstances of Selborne, surrounded by hills, and those hills more or less covered 

 with trees, are the cause of the high rate of rainfall to which it is subject, cannot 

 be doubted ; and the results given in the text are fully borne out by a long 

 succession of observations carefully made by myself. The annual average for 

 25 years, from 1850 to 1874 inclusive, amounts to 32.074 inches. In the year 

 1852 there fell 48.81 inches, and in 1873, 49.56, which is the largest amount I 

 have recorded, slightly surpassed, however, by that mentioned in the text for 

 1782. On a comparison with a large number of other places in various parts of 

 the Kingdom, the monthly reports in Mr. Symond's interesting Meteorological 



Journal show that, eliminating such exceptional localities as Seathwaite, &c., 

 the fall of rain at Selborne is much above the average." (Bell's edition, vol. i. 

 p. 12 note.) [R. B. S.] 



Mr. Henry Maxwell writes: "Professor Bell makes the average rainfall 

 32.074. My record for fourteen years (1885-1898) is an average of 32.040." 

 [R. B. S.] 



2 Mr. Henry Maxwell informs me that the census of 1891 registered 61335 the 

 population of Selborne itself, and 707 for the outlying districts. Total for the 

 whole parish, 1320. In 1877 Bell speaks of the population as being noo. 



The Rev. Gilbert White was the grandfather and also the godfather of our 

 author. He was the first of the family that had any direct connection with 

 Selborne, of which parish he was vicar. He died in February 1727 (cf. Bell's 

 ed, vol. i. Memoir, p. xxiii.). [R. B. S.] 



