24 
NATURE NOTES 
side of the wings of moths and butterflies from the United States, 
east of the Rocky Mountains. These plates, with four hundred 
photographs, appear in his book “ Moths and Butterflies of the 
United States,” of which fifty copies only are for sale in the 
United Kingdom, the agents being Messrs. T. C. and E. C. Jack, 
of 34, Henrietta Street, W.C., and the price of the two morocco 
bound octavo volumes is ;^24 net. 
LETTER TO THE EDITOR. 
Robert Marsham, F.R.S. 
Sir, — It will interest your correspondent,}. H. (see Nature 
Notes for January, p. 8), and I doubt not all your readers, to 
know that the remarkable series of “ Indications of Spring” to 
which he refers, and which was commenced by Robert Marsham 
in the year 1736, is still continued by his descendant. Major 
Marsham; and that although the estate of Stratton Strawless 
has unfortunately passed out of the family, the records are taken 
annually in the adjoining parish of Rippon Hall, where the 
present representative of the family resides. 
The “Indications” were originally communicated to the 
Royal Society in 1789, and the printed sheet to which J. H. 
refers was compiled by the first Lord Suffield ; no date is given, 
but I believe from internal evidence that the table was brought 
down to the year 1810. This has frequently been reproduced 
with varying degrees of accuracy. In 1875 the late Rev. H. P. 
Marsham kindly placed the original documents in my hands, 
and I communicated to the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists’ 
Society a Summary of the Observations to the Spring of 1874 ; 
later on I contributed a second paper to the same Society, 
bringing the summary of the records down to the year 1900. 
This remarkable series of observations has been carried on 
continuously, with the exception of the period intervening 
between 1810 and 1836, by members of the same family and 
virtually on the same spot. In my table 1 give the earliest, 
latest, and difference between these extremes, also the number 
of observations and mean date of twenty-seven phenomena; the 
smallest number of observations of any individual occurrence 
is sixty and the largest 127. I think I am justified in saying 
that no such series of records is anywhere else in existence. 
This Robert Marsham was a very remarkable man, and has 
the additional claim upon the members of the Selborne Society 
that he was a valued correspondent of Gilbert White. In the 
year 1875 the Rev. II. P. Marsham, great-grandson of the 
above-mentioned Robert Marsham, entrusted me with a series 
of letters from White to Marsham, and through the kindness 
of the late Professor Bell, who held the corresponding letters 
