MEMOiU. liii 



The appearance of the book, so long delayed, excited 

 much interest, and brought the author into immediate 

 correspondence with some scientific men whom he had 

 not previously known. Amongst them I may parti- 

 cularly mention Mr. Marsham, E.R.S., of Stratton- 

 Strawless Hall, in Norfolk, the author of a series of 

 observations, communicated to the Royal Society in 

 1789, under the title of " Indications of Spring," and 

 published in the Philosophical Transactions of that year. 

 Amongst the mass of correspondence confided to me by 

 Mr. Algernon Holt White, I find ten letters from Mr. 

 Marsham to Gilbert White, which are full of interesting 

 facts and observations, a considerable portion of which 

 relate to the growth of trees, a subject to which he had 

 for years paid particular attention. His first letter com- 

 mences thus : " Sir, I have received so much pleasure and 

 information from your ingenious Nat: Hist: of Selborne, 

 that I cannot deny myself the honest satisfaction of 

 offering you my thanks." These, with the same number 

 of letters from Gilbert White to Mr. Marsham, will be 

 found in the second volume. The former prove that so 

 far from White having " taken leave of Natural History," 

 as he assured Daines Barrington was his intention, he 

 evidently continued to study Nature with as keen obser- 

 vation and as true devotion as ever. 



With the publication of his book the chief personal 

 interest of Gilbert White with the public ceases. He 

 continued almost to the last his pleasant correspondence 

 with his friends and relations, his kind and genial hos- 

 pitality, his charitable benevolence to the poor, and his 

 pious ministrations in the parish. Little more than 

 a fortnight before his death the last record of his 

 ministerial duties occurs in the parish register of his 



