The 'Natural History of Selborne' has passed beyond the appreciation and love of naturalists and long since become an English classic, read and to be read as long as our language survives. Whilst science will be coexistent with humanity, few scientific books are perused after a century, save by specialists and the curious, for science is ever advancing, and her publications only describe the area to her new landmarks. Art and literature produce more immortal productions: a great picture is for all the time it can be preserved; a noble tragedy or fine poem receives the imprimatur of humanity; while a few books are never lost and seldom forgotten. Gilbert White, writing in an obscure parsonage, on the simple annals of its surrounding animal life, with no desire for fame, and little expectation of literary canonization, has cast a spell over all readers and charmed every lover of books. The interest in his writings is soon combined with a regard for the author, and we seem to have a personal acquaintance with White as we read him, as well as with the various animals whose life-histories he did so much to unravel and described so well. He was the Nestor of British zoological observers, and incited the study of Natural History in every lover of nature who had the aptitude and industry of observation combined with a facility to record such observations.
Zoology in a very important branch is thus open to all classes, to the leisured squire as well as to the recreative artizan, and an intimacy with the 'Natural History of Selborne' still inculcates the lesson, that in these Islands, as well as in the more prolific Tropics, the cataloguing of a fauna is not the sole end of the science.
The book has gone through many editions, seventy-three according to the investigations of Mr. Martin, commencing with the original edition in 1789, when the author was sixty-nine years of age,[1] and within four years of his death, and ending with
- ↑ Bloch, the ichthyologist, had reached the age of fifty-six when he commenced to write on ichthyological subjects.
