LETTER I. 



TO EGBERT MARSH AM, ESQUIRE. 



SELBOENE, NEAR ALTON, HANTS, Aug. 13, 1790. 



S an author I have derived much satisfaction 

 from your kind and communicative letter; 

 and am glad to hear that my book has 

 found its way into Norfolk, and that it has 

 fallen into the hands of so intelligent and 

 candid a reader as yourself, whose good word may contri- 

 bute to make it better known in those parts. I am glad 

 that you happened to mention your most estimable friend 

 the late Dr. Stephen Hales/ because he was also my most 



1 A memoir of Dr. Stephen Hales, extracted from Butler's " Memoirs 

 of Bishop Hildersley," with an engraving from an original portrait, and 

 a facsimile of his handwriting, will be found in the "Gentleman's 

 Magazine" for Jan., 1799 (p. 9). Born in 1677, this celebrated philo- 

 sopher and divine was the grandson of Sir Robert, and brother of Sir 

 Thomas Hales, Bart., of Bekesbourne, in the county of Kent. Educated 

 at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he was admitted a Fellow 

 in 1702, he was appointed first to the cure of Teddington, then to the 

 rectory of Porlock, in Somersetshire, and ultimately, in 1722, to the 

 rectory of Farringdon, near Alton, the adjoining parish to that in which 

 Gilbert White resided. In addition to a treatise on "Vegetable 

 Staticks," which was translated into French by Buffon, as well as into 

 Italian, German, and Dutch, and a practical work on " Ventilators," he 

 indited numerous sermons and tracts in the cause of temperance, and 

 published several scientific papers in the " Philosophical Transactions " 

 of the Royal Society, of which learned body ho was elected a Fellow in 



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