THE NATURAL HISTORY OF

SELBORNE.

AND

ANTIQUITIES

OF

S EL BORNE,

IN THE COUNTY OF SOUTHAMPTON.

BY THE

REV. GILBERT WHITE, M.A.

THE STANDARD EDITION BY E. T. BENNETT.

Thoroughly revised, with additional Notes,

BY

JAMES EDMUND HARTING, F.L.S., F.Z.S.

ILLUSTRATED WITH ENGRAVINGS BY THOMAS BEWICK

AND OTHERS.

LONDON:
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN AND CO.,

PATERNOSTER SQUARE.

Irinted by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.

PUBLISHERS' PREFACE TO THE

FOURTH EDITION.

Do I NCE the publication of our first edition of

this work, in the autumn of 1875, there has appeared in the “Transactions of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists' Society" a series

of ten recently discovered letters from Gilbert White to Robert Marsham, with the corresponding replies.

The extreme interest which attaches to these new letters, and the fact of their having been edited for the Society by Mr. Harting has enabled us to reprint them in an appendix to our present edition, and thus lay before the reader in one volume all that has hitherto come to light from the pen of the historian of Selborne.

Those who desire to possess Marsham's replies to these letters, must be referred to the volume of the Society'a “ Transactions” for 1875-76, in which the entire correspondence is published.