AND ROBERT MARSH A.M. 255 



am unreasonable to wish for so much of your time. I am, 

 with true esteem, Sir, 



your most humble 



& obliged servant, 



R: MARSHAM. 



P.S. I have had the pleasure of recommending your Work 

 to all my correspondents. — I know no man in your County, 

 but M r Chute, the father of your new Member. I con- 

 gratulate you that Election bustle is over; as i suppose, 

 during the contest, ye were as inimical as young Cuckows. 

 I presume you have read Mr Jenner's account of the Cuckow 

 in the Ph. Trans. Vol. 78*; he handsomely disculpates the 

 Cuckow of the want of crropyr). — There is a gentleman in this 

 County of the name of Gurdon of good fortune f. The 

 family, i suppose for some centuries, has been owners of a 

 Village called Letton. They have lately changed the name 

 for Dillingham. — We have the greatest flight of Swallows i 

 think i have ever seen at this time. I heard the flying note of 

 the Fern-Owl on Aug. 20. 



* [See note to Letter IV. to Barrington, Vol. I. p. 123.— T. B.] 

 t [This remark doubtless has reference to the notice of Sir Adam 

 Gurdon in the ' Antiquities of Selbome ' (Letters VIII. and IX.). Mr 

 Gurdon of Letton, High Sheriff of Norfolk in 1789, added to his own 

 surname that of his mother, daughter and heiress of Theophilus Dilling- 

 ham, of Shelton, Beds., and died in 1820. He was succeeded by his son, 

 who dropped the second surname. According to Sir Bernard Burke 

 (' Landed Gentry '), the Gurdons of Letton are descended from Robert 

 Gurdon (who died in 1343), the second and disinherited son of the above- 

 named Sir Adam by his second wife Almeria or Ameria. — A. N. 



Gilbert White states positively and repeatedly that Gurdon had no 

 son, and that Ameria's sons were by her second husband (Vol. I. p. 308). 

 — T. B.] 



