REVIEWS. 
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model for all field-naturalists, although, we fear that few are capable of fol- 
lowing in his footsteps. We have, indeed, dwelt so strongly on the literary 
charms of the book, on the genius which, by a series of letters beautiful in 
their seemingly unstudied simplicity, has rendered the name of an obscure 
Hampshire village a household word wherever the English language is read, 
because this great element of its popularity seems generally to have escaped 
the penetration of its numerous editors. Nearly all the leading popular 
zoological writers of the last fifty years have tried their hands upon an 
edition of White’s “Selborne.” and most of them have overlooked the 
characteristic of the work to which we have above alluded, and taken 
White’s text simply as a peg on which to hang notes embodying all they 
knew or could scrape together upon any subjects mentioned by him. Hence 
most of the editions are overloaded with notes, which, whatever may be 
their intrinsic value, have certainly the inconvenience of too frequently 
diverting the reader’s attention from the text. 
In Mr. Bell’s edition, just published, this is not the case. The venerable 
editor, who has resided for many years in White’s own house at Selborne, 
has evidently appreciated justly the artistic merit of the book, and as he tells 
us in his preface his object in the notes appended to this edition “ .has not 
been to treat at large on the general history of the various objects referred 
to ... . but, rather to render as correct and complete as lay in his power 
the text of Gilbert White, with such additions and modifications as have 
been observed in the district since the first publication of his work.” Thus 
the notes, several of which are borrowed from previous editions, are almost 
entirely such as serve to supplement the text, to correct certain errors into 
which the author had fallen, and to elucidate points which he left doubtful, 
the particulars recorded being in most cases founded on local observations 
for which the editor’s long residence on the spot has given him abundant 
opportunities, and serving literally to complete the “ Natural History of 
Selborne.” 
White’s original work, including both the “Natural History” and the 
“Antiquities of Selborne,” furnished with notes as above described, and 
accompanied by the Naturalist’s Calendar, Observations on Various Parts of 
Nature and other documents of White’s annotated by Markwick, occupy the 
first volume of Mr. Bell’s edition. Of this we need only say that we have in 
it a careful reprint of the original text, accompanied, as already stated, by very 
valuable notes selected solely as completing or emendating White’s work. 
This the editor has prefaced with a short memoir of Gilbert White, in which, 
as might be expected from the even tenour of his life, the sensational element 
is entirely wanting. White lived for the greater part of his long life on the 
property which he had inherited from his father at Selborne, where he was 
contented with officiating as the curate of a non-resident vicar, refusing 
various offers of college-livings which would have drawn him away from the 
district in which he delighted, and which his labours have made familiar to * 
the whole civilized world. 
Mr. Bell’s object, however, in preparing this edition, was to raise as fair a 
monument as possible to the memory of the illustrious naturalist of Sel- 
borne — to give the clearest possible picture of Gilbert White and Selborne. 
With this view he has printed in his second volume all the extant corre- 
NEW SERIES, VOL. II. NO. YI. 0 
