White, Gilbert; The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, in the Country of Southampton. 1st edition, T. Bensley for B. White and Son, London, 1789. Large quarto, pp. v, 468, 6 (index), 1 (errata) with page 292 mis-numbered 262 and pp. 441-442 omitted from the pagination numbering. This error is found in all first edition copies. Two engraved titles and seven engraved plates, two folding.
The volume is complete and in a contemporary half calf over marbled boards, spine repacked with original preserved. Gilt spine titles and panels with heavy rubbing to the top gilt panel. Light scuffing to binding edges and corners, text and plates very clean with only minor light finger smudging to a few page edges. A very good copy of a classic cornerstone work in natural history.
Gilbert White (1720-1793) was a pioneering English naturalist who influenced many of England’s scientists including Charles Darwin. Darwin once commented that he had stood on the shoulders of Gilbert White. When asked in 1870 about books that had deeply impressed him in his youth, Darwin mentioned White's writings. White is best known for his Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789). The book is presented as a compilation of his letters to Thomas Pennant, the leading British zoologist of the period, and Daines Barrington an English barrister. White is arguably the founder of popular natural history and is admired by modern ornithologists as one of the first observers to record detailed notes of birds and their habitats. "The bird census, now so widely promulgated by the Audubon Society, was the invention of Gilbert White. He was the first to perceive the value in the study of migration of birds.
