botany." The old mill at Selborne, with its dilapidated
windsails, presents a picturesque appearance, and up on the
chalk-hills, where there is a far-away view over the pleasant vale
beyond, is the Wishing Stone, erected on a little mound among the trees.
All these things attracted our author's close attention, and as his
parish was over thirty miles in circumference, as may be supposed his
investigations covered a good deal of ground. His work is chiefly
written in the form of a series of letters to friends, and he
occasionally digresses over the border into the neighboring parishes to
speak of their peculiarities or attractions. They all had in his day
little churches, and the parish church of Greatham, not far from
Selborne, is a specimen of the antique construction of the diminutive
chapels that his ancestors handed down to their children for places of
worship, each surrounded by its setting of ancient gravestones. The
_History of Selborne_ shows how the country parson in the olden time,
whose flock was small, parish isolated, and visitors few, amused
himself; but he has left an enduring monument that grows the more
valuable as the years advance. In fact, it is a text-book of natural
history; and so complete have been his observations that he not only
describes all the plants and animals, birds, rocks, soils, and
buildings, but he also has space to devote to the cats of Selborne, and
to tell how they prowl in the roadway and mount the tiled roofs to
capture the chimney swallows. How he loved his home is shown in the poem
with which his work begins. We quote the opening stanza, and also some
other characteristic portions of this ode, which describes the
attractions of Selborne in the last century:

"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 ornament supplied?
Unpleasing, tasteless, impotent expense,
Compared with Nature's rude magnificence.
Oft on some evening, sunny, soft, and still,
The Muse shall hand thee to the beech-grown hill,
To spend in tea the cool, refreshful hour,
Where nods in air the pensile, nest-like bower;
Or where the Hermit hangs his straw-clad cell,
Emerging gently from the leafy dell:
Romantic spot! from whence in prospect lies
Whate'er of landscape charms our feasting eyes;
The pointed spire, the hall, the pasture-plain,
The russet fallow, and th