valuable friend, and in former days near neighbour during the summer months. For though his usual abode was at Teddington, yet did he for many years reside for about two months at his rectory of Faringdon, which is only two miles from hence; and was well known to my grandfather and father, as well as to myself. If I might presume to say that what you see respecting the copulation of toads is, I think, a mistake, you will pardon my boldness; because the amours carried on in pools and wet ditches in the spring time are performed by frogs, which are more black and bloated at that season than afterwards. As to toads, they seem to be more reserved in their intrigues.1

With regard to the annual increase of swallows, and that those that return bear no manner of proportion to those that depart; it is a subject so strange, that it will be best for me to say little. I suppose that nature, ever provident, intends the vast increase as a balance to some great devastations to which they may be liable either in their emigrations or winter retreats. Our swifts have been gone about a week! but the other hirundines have sent forth their first broods in vast abundance; and are now busied in the rearing of a second family. Myself and visitors have often paid due attention to the oak in the Holt, which ought

1717. In the sixth letter of the present series it will be seen that allusion is made in some detail to the philosophical pursuits in which he was wont to engage. He died 4th Jan. 1761.

The family of Hales was originally seated at Hales Place, in Halden, Kent, whence they were usually called "at-Hale." Nicholas at-Hale,

or Hales, lived there at the latter end of the reign of Edward III. See Hasted's "History of Kent," vol. ii. p. 576 (1782), and vol. iii. p. 716, (1790).-ED.

1 See Letter XVII. to Pennant, and the notes thereto, p. 61.-ED. 2 This observation occurs, nearly in the same words, in Letter XXXIX. to Daines Barrington, p. 247.-ED.

3 The early retreat of the swift, "so many weeks before its congeners," is a circumstance to which White has frequently alluded. See Letter XXVI. to Pennant, p. 90. Elsewhere he remarks, "they usually withdraw within the first week of August." See Letter XXXVII. to Pennant, p. 114.-ED.

indeed to have been noticed in my book, and especially as it contains some account of that forest.' You have been an early planter indeed! and may safely say, I should think, that no man living can boast of so large an oak of his own planting! As I had reason to suppose that actual measurement would give me the best idea of your tree, I first took the girth of my biggest oak, a single tree, age not known, in the midst of my meadow: when though it carries a head that measures twenty-four yards three ways in diameter; yet is the circumference of the stem only 10 ft. 6 in. I then measured an oak, standing singly in a gentleman's outlet at about two miles distance, and found it exactly the dimensions of yours. After such success you may well say with Virgil,

"Et dubitant homines serere, atque impendere curas?"

In an humble way I have been an early planter myself. The time of planting, and growth of my trees are as follows: -Oak, in 1731, 4 ft. 5 in.; ash, in 1731, 4 ft. 6 in.; spruce fir, in 1751, 5 ft.; beech, in 1751, 4 ft.; elm, in 1750, 5 ft. 3 in.; lime, in 1756, 5 ft. 5 in. Beeches with us, the most lovely of all forest trees, thrive wonderfully on steep, sloping grounds, whether they be chalk or freestone. I am in possession myself of a beechen steep grove on the freestone, that I am persuaded would please your judicious eye; in which there is a tree that measures fifty feet without bough or fork, and twenty-four feet beyond the fork; there are many as tall. I speak from long observation when I assert, that beechen groves to a warm aspect grow onethird faster than those that face to the N. and N.E., and

1 See Letter IX. to Pennant, pp. 29-32, and the "Observations on Vegetables," pp. 356-357.-ED.

2 This oak of Marsham's will be found noticed in the "Observations on Vegetables," p. 356, where White has quoted a letter from Marsham on the subject, dated "Stratton, 24 July, 1790," to which it would seem the present letter is a reply.-ED.

* These dates and measurements, with a slight discrepancy, have been published in the "Observations on Vegetables" p. 356, above referred to.-ED.

the bark is much more clean and smooth.1 About thirty or forty years ago the oaks in this neighbourhood were much admired, viz., in Hartley Wood, at Temple, and Blackmoor." At the last place, the owner, a very ancient yeoman, through a blameable partiality, let his trees stand till they were red-hearted and white-hearted three or four feet up the stem. We have some old edible chestnut trees in this neighbourhood; but they make vile timber, being always shakey, and sometimes cup-shakey.3

As you seem to know the Fern-owl, or Churn-owl, or Eve-jar, I shall send you, for your amusement, the following account of that curious, nocturnal, migratory bird. The country people here have a notion that the Fern-owl, which they also call Puckeridge, is very injurious to weanling calves by inflicting, as it strikes at them, the fatal distemper known to cow-leeches by the name of puckeridge. Thus does this harmless, ill-fated bird fall under a double imputation, which it by no means deserves ;-in Italy of sucking the teats of goats, where it is called Caprimulgus; and with us, of communicating a deadly disorder to cattle. But the truth of the matter is, the malady above-mentioned is occasioned by a dipterous insect called the astrus bovis, which lays its eggs along the backs of kine, where the maggots, when hatched, eat their way through the hide of

1 See the "Observations on Vegetables," p. 358.-ED.

2 "The oaks of Temple and Blackmoor stand high in the estimation of purveyors, and have furnished much naval timber; while the trees on the freestone grow large, but are what workmen call shaky, and so brittle as often to fall to pieces in sawing." Letter I. to Pennant, p. 4. -ED.

3 This term is explained, in the "Observations on Vegetables" (p. 359), to mean that the wood is "apt to separate in round pieces like cups."-ED.

4 This account will be found already published in the "Observations on Birds," under the head of "Fern-Owl, or Goatsucker" (pp. 334-335), and as it is in the same words, it is probably extracted from the notes which White had collected for a history of this bird to be published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. See the 4th letter in the present series, p. 542.-Ed.

the beast into it's flesh, and grow to a large size.' I have just talked with a man, who says, he has been employed, more than once, in stripping calves that had dyed of the puckeridge: that the ail, or complaint, lay along the chine, where the flesh was much swelled, and filled with purulent matter. Once myself I saw a large, rough maggot of this sort squeezed out of the back of a cow. An intelligent friend informs me, that the disease along the chines of calves, or rather the maggots that cause them, are called by the graziers in Cheshire worry brees, and a single one worry bree. No doubt they mean a breese, or breeze, the name for the gad-fly, or astrus, the parent of these maggots, which lays its eggs along the backs of kine.

But to return to the fern-owl. The least attention and observation would convince men that these poor birds neither injure the goat-herd, nor the grazier; but that they are perfectly harmless, and subsist alone on nightmoths, and beetles; and through the month of July mostly on the scarabæus solstitialis, the small tree-beetle, which in many districts flies and abounds at that season. Those that we have opened have always had their craws stuffed with large night moths, and pieces of chafers; nor does it anywise appear, how they can, weak and unarmed as they are, inflict any malady on kine, unless they possess the powers of animal magnetism, and can affect them by fluttering over them. Upon recollection it must have been at your house that the amiable Mr. Stillingfleet kept his "Calendar of Flora" in 1755.2 Similar pursuits make intimate and

1 In letter XXXIV. to Pennant (p. 107 and note), as well as in the "Observations on Insects and Vermes," (p. 349,) this insect is noticed by White under the name Estrus curvicauda. At the date of his former letter, March 30th, 1771, he seems to have been unaware that it had been described by Linnæus as Estrus bovis, but this impression was evidently altered before the date of the present letter to Marsham.-ED. 2 This was so. Stillingfleet refers to him as his “ very worthy and ingenious friend Robert Marsham," and speaks in high terms of the hospitable treatment that he experienced at Stratton. See the fifth letter of the present series, p. 545. The "Calendar of Flora," made in 1755

lasting friendship. As I do not take in the R. S. T.' I will with pleasure accept of your present of a copy of your "Indications of Spring." Hoping that your benevolence will pardon the unreasonable length of this letter, on which I look back with some contrition, I remain, with true esteem,

Your most humble servant,

GIL. WHITE.

Any farther correspondence will be deemed an honour.

LETTER II.

TO ROBERT MARSHAM, ESQUIRE.

S

SELBORNE, Jan. 18th, 1791. your long silence gave me some uneasiness lest it should have been occasioned by indisposition; so the sight of your last obliging letter afforded me much satisfaction in pro

portion.

I was not a little pleased to find that your friend Lord Suffield corroborated the account of the Cuckoo given by Mr. Jenner, whose relation of the proceedings of that peculiar bird is very curious, new, and extraordinary. It does not appear from your letter that you endeavoured to revive the Swallow, which fell down before your parlourwindow. I have not yet done with trees, and shall there

and published in 1761, will be found alluded to in Letter XII. to Pennant, p. 44.-ED.

1 Royal Society's "Transactions," better known perhaps as the "Philosophical Transactions."-Ed.

2 Dr. Jenner's "Observations on the Natural History of the Cuckoo" will be found in the "Philosophical Transactions" for 1778, pp. 219237.-ED.