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LETTER X. 
[Marsham to White.] 
Stratton: Feb. 12. 1792. 
Dear Sir, 
Many thanks are due to you for your very pleasing 
& instructing letter of the 19 th - of Dec r - but procrastination has 
prevented your receiving them. This failing which afflicted me 
in my younger days, increases in set. 85; & as i have nothing 
worth communicating to you, it might safely have continued longer. 
Our Winter began early, & was uncommonly severe before Xmass. 
From the 8 of Dec r - to the 23 d , was constant frost, with little snow. 
The 12 th , was the coldest, viz near 10 below friezijig point. 
We here, like you in Hampshire had hut little snow. I had a 
'Woodcock in my house the first of October. 
Your new correspondent’s Elm seems to me extraordinary. You 
know the keel of a first-rate ship of War, is 147 feet long. This 
cannot be less than 8 feet round. As Elm is generally slender 
in proportion to the height, Mr. Chiswell’s Elm should he at least 
200 feet high : viz near double the height of the tall Trees of this 
Island; credat &c. The tallest Elms i can recollect are by S* John’s 
Coll. Camb. which i should think are not much above 100 feet. 
You know i traced Mr. Archer’s Oaks near I) own ton, ’till they con- 
tracted into sticks. You may remember, that D r Hunter in his notes 
in his edition of Evelyn’s Silva, says that an hundred of S r Rowland 
Daines Barrington,) and ‘‘retired under ground about the 20th of Novem- 
ber.” (Letter XVII to Dailies Barrington.) It was not until April, 1780, 
that White was able to announce to his friend that the animal had become 
his property. (Letter L. to Daines Barrington.) 
This tortoise survived its master about a year, dying, it is believed, in the 
spring of 1791, after an existence in England of about fifty-four years, the 
last fourteen of which were spent at Selborne. Its shell, which is still 
preserved at Selborne, in the residence of the former owner, is considered by 
Mr. Bell to be that of Testudo marginata, the largest of the three European 
tortoises, but Mr. Bennett, for reasons stated by him in a note to his edition 
of the ‘ Natural History of Selborne,’ was of opinion that it should be 
referred to a distinct species, and he proposed for it the specific name 
whitei, in compliment to its" former owner, a piece of mistaken zeal on his 
part. — J.E.II. 
