vi 
INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 
with wliicli 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. Yan Yoorst and others, 
to speculate upon fresh reprints, some of them very beautifully 
illustrated, and the Bev. 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 form 
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 
