XX 
FBEFAGE, 
children's books as having raised the character of such pub- 
lications. "Had it been designed/' he says^ speaking of 
own workj for a different class of readers, a larger compass 
might have been taken, and a more learned and elevated 
character of writing have been aimed at, yet it must still 
have remained essentially the same; and its merit must 
still have been that of compilation. The plan itself is a 
borrowed one ; and you must certainly recollect its model 
in one of your own little books, where, in a very entertain- 
ing manner, you give a brief description of the several 
months, formed of some of the most striking circumstances 
attending each. What you have done for a child three or 
four years old, I have attempted for young people from ten 
to fourteen,-" 
In editing from the MSS. of White, he carried yet higher 
his desires of extending acquaintance with natural history ; 
the work compiled by him from that source being adapted 
to students of adult powers, and embodying many facts 
which were altogether new, at the time of their publication, 
to naturalists generally. Founded on the observation of 
nature their interest is calculated to endure. 
James Edmund Harting. 
Lincoln's Inn Fields, Sept. 1874. 
