PREFACE. 
Many years have now passed away since we were 
presented with that very interesting and amusing book, 
the 44 Natural History of Selborne : ” nor do I recollect any 
publication at all resembling it having since appeared. 
It early impressed on my mind an ardent love for all the 
ways and economy of nature, and I was thereby led to 
the constant observance of the rural objects around 
me. Accordingly, reflections have arisen, and notes 
been made, such as the reader will find them. The two 
works do not, I apprehend, interfere with each other. 
The meditations of separate naturalists in fields, in 
wilds, in woods, may yield a similarity of ideas ; yet 
the different aspects under which the same things are 
viewed, and characters considered, afford infinite variety 
of description and narrative : mine, I confess, are but 
brief and slight sketches ; plain observations of nature, 
the produce often of intervals of leisure and shattered 
health, affording no history of the country ; a mere 
outline of rural things; the journal of a traveller 
through the inexhaustible regions of nature. 
