13G 
LETTER I. 
[Marsham to White.] 
Stratton, 
near Norwich. 
July 24. 1790. 
Sin, 
I have received so much pleasure & information 
from your ingenious Nat. Hist, of Selborne, that i cannot deny 
myself the honest satisfaction of offering you my thanks : & i 
hope you will excuse the liberty that i have taken. — Ihavekept a poor 
imperfect journal above 50 years ; hut it has been chiefly confined 
to the leafing & growth of Trees ; & was undertaken by the advice 
of my most estimable friend the late D r Hales. 1 * * By that i find 
1 A memoir of Dr. Stephen Hales, extracted from Butler’s 4 Memoirs of 
Bp. Hildersley,’ with an engraving from an original portrait, and afac-simile 
of his handwriting, will be found in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ for Jan. 
1799 (p. 9). Born in 1677, this celebrated philosopher and divipe was the 
grandson of Sir Robert, and brother of Sir Thomas Hales, Bart. , of Bekes- 
bourne, in the Co. 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 ulti- 
mately, 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 4 Ventilators,’ 
he indited numerous sermons and tracts in the cause of temperance, and 
published several scientific papers in the 4 Philosophical Transactions’ of 
the Royal Society, of which learned body he was elected a Fellow in 1717. 
In the sixth letter of the present series it will be seen that allusion is made 
in some detail to the philosophical pursuits in which he was wont to engage, 
lie died 4th Jan. 1761. 
The family of Hales was originally seated at Hales Place, in Ilalden, 
Kent, whence they were usually called 4 at-llale.’ Nicholas at- Hale, or 
Hales, lived there at the latter end of the reign of Edward III. See 
Hasted’s ‘History of Kent,’ vol. ii, p. 576, (1782) and vol. iii, p. 716, 
(1790). — J. E. H. 
