72 GILBEET WHITE OF SELBORNE i78i 



breasts at all honest with respect to currans. Birds are 

 guided by colour, and do not touch any white fruits 'til they 

 have cleared all the red ; they eat the red grapes, rasps, 

 currans, and goose berries first." 



To Miss White. Selborne, Aug. 1, 1781. 



Dear Niece, — I thank you for your care about my tea and 

 chest, which Thomas is to fetch from Alton this afternoon. 

 We shall be very glad to see you and your father whenever 

 it is convenient, and hope we shall meet happily together. 

 Mr. and Mrs. and Miss Fort, and Mr.* and Mrs. and Miss 

 Hounsom, &c. dined with me last Saturday; and this day 

 they set out for Funtington, from whence Mrs. and Miss 

 Fort are to return to Newton. 



We are in the midst of wheat harvest, and have glorious 

 weather : the wheat in general has much straw ; but proves 

 light and blasted; but in some countries the state of the 

 crop is deplorable. Our gardens are burnt up; but Johnf 

 says that we are very verdurous in comparison with South 

 Lambeth. 



Tell your father that I thank him much for his prefaces, J 

 some of which have given me great pleasure. He need not, 

 unless he chuses it, order a newspaper down ; for we have 

 four every week. I am sorry for Uncle Harry's disappoint- 

 ment: I thought the young man's coming was a settled 

 thing. Mr. Etty is in Oxfordshire, whither he was called 

 by the sudden death of his tenant, who was not in good 

 circumstances. 



Mrs. Hounsom came down to Newton in the coach, in 



* Gilbert White's niece, Anne Woods, married John Hounsom of Funt- 

 ington, Sussex, in 1792. His father, the "Mr. Hounsom" of this letter, 

 was probably the "Mr. John Hounsom, linen draper in Fleet Street," 

 mentioned in Gilbert White's letter to his brother John of March 9th, 1775. 



t "Gibraltar Jack." 



X T. Holt- White mentions "my father's [i.e. Thomas White's] Preface to 

 his republication of Evelyn's * Fumifugium.' " This edition is not known at 

 the British Museum, 



