LETTER I. 
TO ROBERT MARSH AM, ESQUIRE. 
Selborne, 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 I^orfolk_, 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 
^ 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). Bom 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 reajded. In addition to a treatise on " Vegetable 
Staticks," which was translated into French by Bufibn, 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 Koyal Society, of which learned body ho was elected a Fellow in 
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