208 GILBEKT WHITE OF SELBORNE 1739 



not written to you, I am glad to hear my friend Miss Reeve 

 has been seeing you. Very learned and, I hope you think, 

 very civil, a knight's eldest daughter with perhaps a thousand 

 pound for every year of her age, or at least half as many. 

 Hendon House near Maidenhead is in a most charming 

 country, and as yet perhaps a non-descript. As you are 

 perfectly acquainted with every quadruped and bird and 

 insect and flower near Selborne and have introduced them to 

 the public and to immortality, it will be a pleasant circum- 

 stance to vary the scene, and add celebrity to "Windsor and its 

 neighbourhood. 



" Methinks I see thee straying on the " thicket, 

 "And asking every" bird that roves the sky 

 " If ever it have" seen fair Selborne's down. 



I cannot say but I am interested in this expected 

 migration. I can then whip over to see you often and 

 take a dinner or a bed for a single night and return to 

 college. But Selborne is a long way off. And yet it is 

 worth going a long way to see, if it agrees at all with 

 the account which a very curious and interesting book in 

 my room gives of it. You must know that I am reading 

 this work with great avidity in the very few leisure moments 

 that I can find or steal, and I am only sorry that the 

 Index to a volume containing such a variety of useful 

 and authentic information is not much more copious. If 

 you are acquainted with the writer of this "good book," 

 you may tell him, with my humble service, that I hope 

 to be able to give him some papers that may help in the 

 second edition to remedy this single defect. But it is 

 time to answer your queries in regard to the distemper 

 called " Fuckeridge." I consulted my brother and other 

 persons on this subject and minuted down the particulars 

 he gave me, in which others also concurred. The name 

 of Puckeridge is unknown in Cheshire. The disease along 



