White's Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne. With Notes by
Frank Buckland, and a Chapter on Antiquities by Lord Selborne. (Macmillan.)—That this is a very handsome volume, and such as the countless admirers of Gilbert White may well deem worthy of the man, cannot be doubted. Mr. Delamotte's illustrations are excellent, and the binding, the print, the paper, are all that can be desired. And Mr. Buckland seems to us to have done his part of editor as well as circum- stances permitted. To get the ideal edition, he should have been Rector of Selborne. If fate would only have brought two'keen naturalists to the same place, with an interval of about a century between them, what a boon it would have been ! As it is, his place has been to can hardly complain if we find the reading somewhat heavy. The illustrate White's observations with observations of his own. As he has a
plentiful store of these, his notes are very interesting as a supplement to the original. Bat if he could have noted for some long-continued period the same classes of phenomena which had been noted before, his work would have had a singular value. But it is of no use to quarrel with the dispositions of Providence ; and we cannot expect even the most enter- prising publisher to have stationed the future editor for twenty years at the place to be described. We are very thankful for what we have got. The chief interest of Lord Selborne's chapter is the account of a remarkable discovery of Reman coins, which was made in the neigh- bourhood of Woolmor Pond, a locality already famous from the same cause. There was a large " find" in 1741, chiefly of coins of Marcus Aurelius, Faustina, and Commodus ; another" find " in 1774, the coins in this case extending from Claudius (first of that name) to Commodue. It was a remarkable thing about the discovery which Lord Selborne describes, that it showed occupation at a much later period. It included two coins of the younger Gordian (238-244), more than 3,000 of Gal- lienus, more than 4,000 of Victorinus, nearly 12,000 of the two Totriei, father and son, and nearly 4,000 of Claudius Gothicus. The total number was 24,985, and the range of time, 238-296. All were of copper or bronze, itself a singular circumstance.
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