161 
best Oak & best Beech had each increased an inch, which ii find is 
more than my Trees had done in the two years measurement, which 
are in the Ph. Tr. in 1758. so i hope for a good year’s growth : as 
they have two months more to grow. The lateral shoots of healthy 
Beeches are 2 feet ; & one of the Copper coloured Beech is near 
21 inches. 
I am with great esteem 
Dear Sir your most humble 
& obliged servant 
K : Marsh am. 
P.S. when i wrote this i hoped for a friend to direct it ; but no 
neighbours are come down : & i am ashamed to make you pay for 
a leaf. 1 did not see i had concluded my letter before, but am too 
lazy to write it over again ; <te hope you will pardon this, & the 
many other blunders in an old fellow of 84. 
LETTER IX. 
[White to Marsham.] 
Selborne near Alton : 
Dec^ 19. 1791. 
Dear Sir, 
Your letter, which met me so punctually in 
London, was so intelligent, & so entertaining, as to have merited 
a better treatment, & not to have been permitted to have lain so 
long unnoticed ! 
That there is no rule without an exception is an observation 
that holds good in Xat. History: for tho’ you & I have often 
remarked that Swifts leave us in general by the first week in 
August : yet I see by my journal of this year, that a relation of mine 
had under the eaves of his dwelling house in a nest a young squab 
swift, which the dam attended with great assiduity till September 
