OF SELBORNE, 
547 
sights; and that I myself, in the year 1756, set off with a 
party at two o' the clock in the morning to see the Hessian 
troops reviewed on a down near Winchester. While I was 
writing the sentence above, my servant, and some neigh- 
bom-s came down from the hill, and told me that they could 
not only hear the discharges of the ordnance and small arms, 
and see the volumes of smoke from the guns, but that 
they could also, they thought, smell the scent of the gun- 
powder, the wind being I^.E., and blowing directly from 
the scene of action at Wickham bushes, though they are in 
a direct line more than twenty miles from hence. 
As I had written to you as long ago as March, I began to 
fear that our correspondence was interrupted by indisposition 
— when your agreeable letter of July 14th came in, and 
relieved me from my suspense. You do me much honour 
by calling one of your beeches after my name. Linnaeus 
himself was complimented with the Linnoea horealis by one 
of his friends, a mean, trailing, humble plant, growing in the 
steril, mossy, shady wilds of Siberia, Sweden, and Russia; 
while I am dignified by the title of a stately Beech, the 
most beautiful and ornamental of all forest trees. The 
reason, I should suppose, why your trees have not encreased 
in growth and girth this summer is the want of heat to 
expand them. I have not this year measured my firs 
in circumference ; but they have, I see, many of them, made 
surprising leading shoots. My account of the Fern-owl, or 
Eve-jarr, was prevented by Madam Procrastination, who, a 
jade, lulled me in security all the spring, and told me I had 
time enough and to spare, till at last I found that the R. S. 
meetings were prorogued till the autumn ;"^ against which I 
^ Tlie genus Linncea was characterized by Dr. Gronovius, and first 
pTiblislied as a genus in 1737 in the first edition of Linnaeus " Genera 
Plantarum," In the same year appeared the " Flora Lapponica," in 
which a good figure of the plant will be found, as well as in the " Flora 
Suecica," published in 1745. Only one species of the genus is known, 
the LiivKEu horealis^ above mentioned. — Ed. 
'"^ The meetings of the Royal Society, for whose " Transactions " the 
account of the Fern-owl Avas mtended. See p. 532, note 4. — Ed. 
