PREFACE.
Reading edition
Many years have now passed away since we were presented with that very interesting and amusing book, the “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 vithings 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.
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