ABSTRACT
He did not isolate species merely in the process of writing about them. The Natural History of Selborne is quite different in conception from books concerned mainly with identification, in which species are summed up, one to each page or brief section. Until well into the twentieth century, such books depended heavily on 'descriptions', or more or less detailed accounts of physical appearances. Descriptions were assumed to aid identification - and were all that was thought necessary for the ascertaining of 'specific differences' -but they could be taken quite conveniently from preserved and mounted specimens.
