[William Warde Fowler, historian and ornithologist, tutor at Lincoln College, Oxford.] Typed Letter Signed to ‘Bridge’, discussing 'the diminution of corn-growing' and an ornithological excursion.

Fowler’s entry in the DNB states that he resigned his tutorship in 1910, when he ‘retired to Kingham, where, since 1873, he had enjoyed a country home and entertained his pupils. From 1899 he lived there with his sister Alice’. On both sides of what was an 8vo leaf, the lower part of which has been torn away, leaving a piece roughly 20 cm square, with 26 typed lines and the autograph valediction, in a large bold hand, ‘Yours sincerely / W. Warde Fowler’. Aged and worn, but with the remaining text clear. A nice letter, combining Fowler’s main interests. He begins by answering a question by the recipient, explaining his reasons for gradually coming to doubt ‘the old view’, with reference to Mommsen and a work by Salvioli, and giving details of his first expression of his ‘new conviction’ in a couple of publications. ‘I think there has been a change of opinion in the historical world generally since then. The diminution of corn-growing was due to several causes, as it was also in England in the 16th century & onwards. No doubt foreign importation may have had something to do with it, but the old assumption was that Italy was in early times a corn-growing country, which I can’t believe.’ Turning to ornithology, he explains that he has guests from London, and that it is a ‘glorious morning’, and that they are all ‘just getting ready to go out & look for migrants &c.’ They have been ‘in woods, hearing old chiffchaffs & willow-wrens, & getting anemones & cowslips’. He ‘can’t hear the birds as well’ as he used to, ‘but as I had a good thirty years of them I can imagine them to my satisfaction still.’ This brings the first page to where the letter has been torn away. The reverse begins abruptly: ‘the B.O.C. that Collett took Alban there the other day: but the meeting did not seem a very interesting one.’ The letter concludes with a short reference to the recipient’s marriage.