‘Madame,—I am sorry I had not the happiness of seeing you when I was last to wait on you, but will take another opportunity of paying my respects. The worms you were pleased to send seem to me the very same I received from Holland, and which I was in the utmost distress for, being quite out, and my Polypes in great want, so that a word of instruction, how I may get at some of these worms, will be a great obligation. When I had the honour of leaving you a Polype, I had never a one by me with a young one fairly put out, so here was one beginning. I now beg leave to send you such a one; and when you are disposed to cut one will wait on you, and show it you in a microscope, if you have not yet seen it. I beg leave to return very many thanks for the favour of seeing your noble collection of rarities, and have hardly talked of anything else since. ‘I am, Madam, with the sincerest respect, ‘Your ladyship’s most obedient humble servant, ‘M. FOLKES. ‘May 6, 1743. Doddington, in his diary, under the date of June 28, 1750, mentions supping at this lady’s house, in company with Lady Middlesex, Lord Bathurst, and Lady Torrington; and in the ‘World’ (No. 114) there is a humorous paper on the distinctions between noble birth, great birth, and no birth, in which the writer says, ‘I never suspected that it could possibly mean the shrivelled tasteless fruit of an old genealogical tree. I communicated my doubts, and applied for information to my late, worthy, and curious friend, Mrs. Kennon, whose valuable collection of fossils and minerals, lately sold, sufficiently prove her skill and researches in the most recondite parts of nature. She, with that frankness and humanity which were natural to her, assured me that it was all a vulgar error, in which, however, the nobility and gentry prided themselves; but that, in truth, she had never observed the children of the quality to be wholesomer and stronger than others, but rather the contrary, which difference she imputed to certain causes which I shall not here specify.’ I possess several letters written to this lady by the Governor of Bermuda, Mr. Popple, in 1739 and 1740, in which he considers her of sufficient importance to request that she would speak a good word for him in behalf of his being removed to a better Government, or some other employment at home, and concludes a letter with saying, ‘I believe your present power to assist your absent friends is now as great as I have always thought your inclination was.’