The Natural History of Selborne

The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, or just The Natural History of Selborne is a classic nature text by English naturalist and ornithologist Gilbert White. It was first published in 1789 by his brother Benjamin. It has been continuously in print since then, with nearly 300 editions up to 2007.The book was published late in White's life, compiled from a mixture of his letters to other naturalists -- Thomas Pennant and Daines Barrington; a 'Naturalist's Calendar' (in the second edition) comparing phenology observations made by White and William Markwick of the first appearances in the year of different animals and plants; and observations of natural history organized more or less systematically by species and group.

"See, Selborne spreads her boldest beauties round The varied valley, and the mountain ground, Wildly majestic What is all the pride, Of flats, with loads of ornaments supplied ?-- Unpleasing, tasteless, impotent expense, Compared with Nature's rude magnificenee."

"Arise, my stranger, to these wild scenes haste; The unfinish'd farm awaits your forming taste: Plan the pavilion, airy, light, and true; Through the high arch call in the length'ning view; Expand the forest sloping up the hill; Swell to a lake the scant, penurious rill; Extend the vista; raise the castle mound In antique taste, with turrets ivy-crown'd: O'er the gay lawn the flow'ry shrub dispread, Or with the blending garden mix the mead; Bid China's pale, fantastic fence delight; Or with the mimic statue trap the sight."

Author: Gilbert White
Publisher: Binker North
Published: 10/01/1789
Pages: 272
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.17lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.63d
ISBN: 9781774415344

About the Author
White, Gilbert: - "Gilbert White FRS (18 July 1720 - 26 June 1793) was a parson-naturalist, a pioneering English naturalist, ecologist and ornithologist. He is best known for his Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne. White is best known for his The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789). This is presented as a compilation of his letters to Thomas Pennant, the leading British zoologist of the day, and the Hon. Daines Barrington, an English barrister and another Fellow of the Royal Society, though a number of the 'letters' such as the first nine were never posted, and were written especially for the book.[16] The book has been continuously in print since its first publication.[17] It was long held, probably apocryphally, to be the fourth-most published book in the English language after the Bible, the works of Shakespeare, and John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress White's biographer, Richard Mabey, praises White's expressiveness: What is striking is the way Gilbert [White] often arranges his sentence structure to echo the physical style of a bird's flight. So 'The white-throat uses odd jerks and gesticulations over the tops of hedges and bushes'; and 'Woodpeckers fly volatu undosu [in an undulating flight], opening and closing their wings at every stroke, and so are always rising and falling in curves. White has often been seen as an amateur 'country writer', especially by the scientific community. However, he has been called 'the indispensable precursor to those great Victorians who would transform our ideas about life on Earth, especially in the undergrowth - Lyell, Spencer, Huxley and Darwin.'[20] And he is under-rated as a pioneer of modern scientific research methods, particularly fieldwork.[21] As Mabey argues, the blending of scientific and emotional responses to Nature was White's greatest legacy: 'it helped foster the growth of ecology and the realisation that humans were also part of the natural scheme of things."