[Henry John Reynolds-Moreton, 3rd Earl of Ducie.] Three Autograph Letters Signed (both 'Ducie') to the ornithologist W. L. Mellersh

The three letters total 5pp., 8vo. On aged and damp-stained paper. In the first letter (21 May 1902) Ducie writes that he has that morning received Mellersh's book ('A Treatise on the Birds of Gloucestershire', 1902), and that he is 'delighted with it. Whether it would find a "public" if offered in a cheaper form, I cannot say. It is too scientific for the crowd. | I note only one error. You make out that I shot a Squacco Heron. I bought it or had it given to me from Berkeley'. The second letter (14 August 1911, with 'Numenius arquatus' in red ink at head of first page) begins with a query regarding 'some stuffed birds in their cases' which he sent to the County Museum. The latter part concerns 'a great fall of Dew': 'I heard a great hooting of owls all over the Lake Woods | Since that time there has been no dew - and no hooting [...] An ingenious person has sugested that the dew kept the mice in their holes - and that the owls were lamenting the loss of their supper'. In the last letter (15 July 1912) he jokes that he is surprised to learn that 'a Reeves Pheas: from Tortworth had some influence in yr life'. He ends with an adapted quotation from Alexander Pope: 'Behold the child by natures kindly law | Pleased with a feather [for 'rattle'] tickled with a straw'.