8 GLAUCUS; OR, 



there is now established a society of subscribers 

 and correspondents. They can remember, too, 

 when, on the first appearance of Bewick's " British 

 Birds," the excellent sportsman who brought it 

 down to the Forest was asked, Why on earth he 

 had brought a book about '' cock sparrows " ? and 

 had to justify himself again and again, simply by 

 lending the book to his brother sportsmen, to con- 

 vince them that there were rather more than a dozen 

 sorts of birds (as they then held) indigenous to 

 Hampshire. But the book, perhaps, which turned 

 the tide in favour of Natural History, among the 

 higher classes at least, in the south of England, was 

 White's " History of Selborne." A Hampshire gen- 

 tleman and sportsman, whom everybody knew, 

 had taken the trouble to write a book about the 

 birds and the weeds in his own parish, and the 

 every-day things which went on under his eyes, 

 and every one else's. And all gentlemen, from the 

 Weald of Kent to the Vale of Blackmore, shrugged 

 their shoulders mysteriously, and said, "Poor fel- 

 low ! " till they opened the book itself, and disco - 



