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Dear Sir
Pray accept my best thanks for your kind favor of the 15th February & also for the beautiful little Kings-fisher which by your kindness accompanied the Fringilla, they both arrived perfectly safe.
Was very glad to find the incrusted teeth were the least acceptable, could send more, if wanted; what do you judge to be the cause? it seems certainly a mineral substance: it has been usually attributed to the nature of the soil, am apt to think this opinion on many accounts improbable & especially as the teeth of lambs, that have eat grass, if at all, at least for a very short time, have been found as strongly incrusted as those of aged sheep; have not as yet observed, how they are in Cattle, but will; have the tooth of a cow, given me some years since in London, as a curiosity from Scotland, by Jeans the fossilist, deeply incrusted with the same, apparently Pyritical Matter; he attributed it to the nature of the Soil, as does Mr Pennant in his Brit: Zoology, article Sheep; Hector Boethius's long supposed fabulous sheep with golden teeth, were undoubtedly of this sort.
My Twin Cow was in so much haste to confute the Universality of Mr Hunter's Theory, that she brought forth a dead calf the 3d instant, near six weeks before her time, she is however likely to prove a pretty tolerable milch cow, she is turned