vi INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 



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. Bohn'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 White's journals.; and a 

 second quarto edition was again published in 1813, with notes by 

 the Eev. 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 disarrange- 

 ment 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 Voorst and others, 

 to speculate upon fresh reprints, some of them very beautifully 

 illustrated, and the Eev. L. Jenyns, Mr. Bennet, and Mr. Jesse, 

 have all contributed 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 orm 

 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 held, 

 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 imagina- 

 tion to ramble and assume conclusions the exactness of which 

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



