242 GILBEET WHITE OF SELBOKNE 1792 



hee: March 16. daffodil blows, and Apricot: 19. peaches, and 

 nectarines. I have read BosweWs Johnson with pleasure. 

 As to Bishop Home I knew him well for near 40 years : he 

 has often been at my House. Stillingfleet, I see, wrote his 

 Calendar of Flora at your house : He speaks in high terms 

 of the hospitable treatment that he experienced at Stratton. 



Wonderful is the regularity observed by nature ! I have 

 often remarked that the smallest willow wren (see my Book), 

 called here the Chif-chaf from its two loud sharp notes, is 

 always the ^rs^ spring bird of passage, and that it is heard 

 usually on March 20 : when behold, as I was writing this 

 very page, my servant looked in at the parlour door, and 

 said that a neighbour had heard the Chif-chaf this morning!! 

 These are incidents that must make the most indifferent look 

 on the works of the Creation with wonder ! 



My old tortoise lies under my laurel hedge, and seems as 

 yet to be sunk in profound slumbers. You surprise me, 

 when You mention your age : your neat hand, and accurate 

 language would make one suppose you were not 50. 



I remain, with true esteem, 



Y"* most obliged servant, 



Gil. White. 



When Mr. Townsend avers that the Nightingales at Valez 

 sing the winter through, I should conclude that he took 

 up that notion on meer report; because I had a brother 

 who lived 18 years at Gibraltar, and who has written an 

 accurate Nat. Hist, of that rock, and its environs. Now 

 he says, that Nightingales leave Andalusia as regularly 

 towards autumn as other Summer birds of passage, A pair 

 always breeds in the Governor's garden at the Convent. 

 This History has never been published, and probably now 

 never will, because the poor author has been dead some 

 years. There is in his journal such ocular demonstration 

 of swallow emigration to and from Barbary at Spring, and 



