160 GILBEET WHITE OF SELBOENE 1786 



Tell your mother that on the 10th of this month she and 

 I shall have a new sister.* Verses have been written on 

 ladies eye-hrows ; but you talk of the beauty of your 

 mistress's eye-lashes: in that matter as far as I remember, 

 you speak like a Turk. Now you talk of ladies, can you 

 repeat "Pretty, pretty Peggy Haggit" three times in a 

 breath ? We expect Mrs. Etty from Beaconsfield every day. 

 Her son Charles, it is to be hoped, will soon return from 

 ^omh^y. Your loving uncle, 



Gil. White. 



Little Tom Clement is visiting at Petersfield, where he 

 plays much at Cricket : Tom bats, his grand-mother bowls, 

 and his great grand-mother watches out ! ! 



To Mary Barker, Selborne, Octr. 25, 1786. 



Dear Mece, — I received your favour of Octr. 12th, and 

 rejoice to hear that my nephew Mr. Barker has made so 

 prudent a choice, and has so fair a prospect of happiness in 

 the matrimonial state. He is to live, I find, at the parsonage 

 house at Whitwell, where I spent three very agreeable 

 months as long ago as the year 1742, when I was a very 

 young man. 



Present my respects to your father, and tell him that the 

 caterpillars of phalcence devoured all the foliage of our oaks 

 in the bud, and therefore of course there could be no acorns : 

 but that the beeches were loaded with mast ; and that I was 

 not unmindful of his injunctions ; but have employed people 

 to pick up a quantity of seeds from those trees, which 

 I intend shall be cast into the bushes on the down. We 

 had a wet, cold August and September after a dry spring, 

 and hot summer. We have grapes in vast abundance, that 



* On August 20th, 1786, Benjamin White, senr., married (secondly) Mary, 

 widow of the Rev. Richard Yalden, Vicar of Newton Valence. This lady 

 appears in the folding north-east view of Selborne, which forms the frontis- 

 piece to 'The Natural History of Selborne.' 



