10 Memoir of Mr. John Legg, of Market Lavington, Wilis. 



Dartmouth family, and it may have been so, but I can find no 

 evidence of it. It is true that the Dartmouth coat of arms and crest 

 may be seen surmounting one of the monuments of the Legges in 

 Market Lavington Church, but these were added in comparatively 

 recent times by one of the family then residing in the parish, who 

 asserted a connection, though (so far as we can ascertain) without 

 authority. There may, however, have been grounds for such 

 assertion which we have failed to trace. At any rate the present 

 members of the family repudiate such claim. Lord Dartmouth is 

 not aware that any branch of his family had settled in "Wiltshire^ 

 and the present representative of our author (Mr. Henry Legge) 

 expressly says " we never claimed any relationship with the Dart- 

 mouth family." That the name of the Dartmouth family is spelt 

 Legge, and our author signed himself Legg, is quite immaterial to 

 the point in question, as such variations in spelling were common 

 with our ancestors : moreover, as I am informed by Mr. Legge, of 

 Surbiton, the final e, though dropped for some years, was originally 

 added, and was again resumed, and has been in use in his family 

 for more than ninety years. 



To return to our author, Mr. John Legg. When he published 

 his two treatises on the " Emigration of British Birds," and on 

 " Grafting and Inoculation of Plants," he was only 25 years of age. 

 He lived and died a bachelor, and for some time at least, if not to 

 the end of his short life, his sisters lived with him. He appears to 

 have had no profession, but to have devoted himself in his early 

 years to the study of Nature ; and he is reported by his descendants 

 to have practised the art of grafting and inoculation of trees in his 

 own garden at Lavington : but in the latter part of his life, for he 

 died in middle age, he was absorbed in religious speculations ; and 

 he appears to have latterly given way to melancholy thoughts and 

 unhappy broodings, to which he was doubtless predisposed by much 

 infirmity of body. Family tradition reports that towards the end 

 of his life he shut himself up almost completely, seldom moving 

 beyond his garden, where he indulged in reveries, and mused in 

 solitude : nay, so persistently did he shun the society of his fellows 

 that he objected to be seen in the village street, and to avoid 



