VILLAGE STREET WHITE'S HOUSE. 



INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 



IN agreeing to the request of the proprietors of the National 

 Illustrated Library, to give my assistance to their present edition 

 of tke " Natural History of Selborne," I have felt that there was 

 a danger of making repetitions, and a difficulty of adding much 

 that was new to a work which had been printed in so many 

 forms, and had been of late years so much written about. But 

 the wish to extend among a new generation of readers the 

 knowledge of a book which, in the opinion of every one, is well 

 fitted for the perusal of young persons, and is a valuable record 

 and example how the leisure hours of a country clergyman may 

 be profitably and innocently employed, induced me to comply. 

 There was also the desire to make some 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 



