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that return boar no manner of proportion to those that depart; 1 * it 
is a subject so strange, that it will bo best for me to say little. I 
suppose that nature, ever provident, intends the vast encrease as a 
balance to some great devastations to which they may bo liable 
either in their emigrations or winter retreats. Our swifts have 
been gone about a week ! ! but the other liirundines have sent forth 
their first broods in vast abundance; & are now busied in the 
rearing of a second family. Myself & visitors have often paid 
due attention to the oak in the Holt, which ought indeed to have 
been noticed in my book, & especially as it contains some account 
of that forest. 3 You have been an early planter indeed! & may 
safely say, I should think, that no man living can boast of so large 
an oak of his own planting ! As I had reason to suppose that 
actual measurement would give me the best Idea of y r - tree, I 
first took the girth of my biggest oak, a single tree, ago not known, 
in the midst of my meadow: when tho’ it carries a head that 
measures 24 yards three ways in diameter; yet is the circumference 
of tho stem only 10 ft. G in. I then measured an oak, standing 
singly in a Gent’s outlet at about two miles distance, & found 
it exactly the dimensions of your’s. After such success you may 
well say with Virgil, 
“ Et dubitant homines serere, atque impendere curas ? 
In an humble way I have been an early planter myself. Tho 
time of planting, and growth of my trees are as follows. 
Oak in 1731 — 4 ft. 5 in. Ash in 1731 — 4 ft. 6i in. Spruce fir 
in 1751 — 5 ft. 0 in. Beech in 1751 — 4 ft. 0 in. Elm in 1750 — 
5 ft. 3 in. Lime in 1756, 5 ft. 5 in. 4 Beeches with us, the most 
lovely of all forest trees, thrive wonderfully on steep, sloping 
1 This observation occurs, nearly in the same words, in Letter XXXIX 
to Daines Barrington — J. E. II. 
- The early retreat of the swift, “ so many weeks before its congeners,” is 
a circumstance to which White has frequently alluded. See Letter XXVI to 
Pennant. Elsewhere he remarks, “ they usually withdraw within the first 
week of August.” See Letter XXXVII to Pennant. — J. E. II. 
s See Letter IX to Pennant, and the ‘‘Observations on Vegetables.” 
— J.E.H. 
4 These dates and measurements, with a slight discrepancy, have been 
published in the “ Observations on Vegetables ” above referred to. — J.E.H. 
O 
