Petersburg
April 1
My dear Henry
I hope you received safe the note I sent you immediately on my arrival here<1> and that the treasure it contained was not damaged but has turned out as valuable as I am expecting it shall – I cannot procure the Kiel Taschenbuch <2> any where here – but I will send you two other Taschenbuchs ere long one is Flora Cryptogamia Germaniæ Erlangensis <3> – the other is Les Mousses des environs de Petersbourg et de Moscou par le docteur Liboschitz <4> – but I fear not in time to send with this letter – I got a card for the Imperial Library here a few days after my arrival & went straight and wrote down (as is the custom for books you want) Flora Rossica <5> & the next day went for it – & to their eternal shame be it known they had written deest <6> for they have it not – I find some of those books are to be had cheap here as they are sold at the prices of the Academy 20 or 30 years ago – but for that very reason they are getting scarce – I have had the pleasure of looking over part of a voluminous H. Siccus from the Moravian settlement of Sarepta in the government of Sarâstof near the Volga<7> & the steppes there are hundreds of Umbelliferons which are thrown away on me – I send you the seeds of some which I recommend to your protection I am in hopes of more in the Summer – there are in the H.S. Statice Limonium reticulata coriaria & a dozen others with Salicornias or Salsolas innumerable which grow in the salt marshes & lakes of central Asia together with Tamarises & various other english sea plants – Astragali endless – which I know are your favorites – some of these grow in sandy deserts & some in very rich plains but the common character of all that country is to be impregnated strongly with salt – which is necessary for some of those plants I believe but not for all – there are many sorts of Linum – I was told the names are not all perfectly correct – the collector sent some of his garden plants among which were Ipomæ quamoclit and Chelidonium Glaucium There were some very handsome grasses from the richer steppes – I am not yet come to the Orchidæ – there are many British species and almost all are British genera – & would grow perfectly well out of doors with us – I am promised some in the Summer from Persia and the Caucasus which will be great treasures – There is a Flora Caucasica published at Charkow<8> but very rare here I am told it is well done – but in my ideas Flora Lusitanica is the perfection of Botany–<9> You would laugh to see the laurels in pots in all the rooms here I find the Flora Siberica <10> is not colourd & not at all a shewy work like the F. Rossica – I forgot to say there were many Euphorbias some really handsome ones from Sarepta
W. H. F. Talbot Esqr
31. Sackville Street
London
Notes:
1. See Doc. No: 00760, which dates this document to 1817.
2. Kiel Taschenbuch: a pocket volume about the cryptogamic plants of Germany. Friedrich Weber (1781-1823) and Daniel Matthias Heinrich Mohr (1780-1808), Botanisches Taschenbuch auf das Jahr 1807: Deutschlands kryptogamische Gewächse (Akademische Buchhandlung, Kiel 1807). At 509 pages, it would have required a commodious pocket This work was dedicated to a Swedish scientist and to Dawson Turner (1775-1858), botanist, author & banker and a correspondent with WHFT. A further work co-authored by Weber and Mohr elaborated the work on freshwater algae of another WHFT correspondent, Lewis Weston Dillwyn (1778-1855), Welsh botanist & MP: Grossbritanniens Conserven nach Dillwyn fur deutsche Botaniker bearbeitet (Gottingen 1803-1805).
3. Georg Franz Hoffman (1761–1826), Deutschlands Flora, oder, Botanisches Tasschenbuch Cryptogamie/zweyter Theil für das Iahr 1795 (Erlangen: Iohann Jacob Palm, 1796).
4. Joseph Liboschitz (1783–1824), Flore des Environs de St. Petersbourg et de Moscou (St Petersbourg: 1811).
5. Peter Simon Pallas (1741–1811), Flora Rossica (St Petersburg: J. J. Weilbrecht, 1784, 1788).
6. It is not here. The Imperial (Public) Library in St Petersburg was established in 1795 by Catherine the Great.
7. Hortus siccus, a collection of dried botanical specimens. Sarepta, on the River Volga, Russia, was settled in 1765 by the Moravian Brethren, a religious group, from Saxony, Germany. The administration was based at Saratov, an important town on the River Volga, which flowed from northern Russia to the Caspian Sea.
8. Friedrich August, and Freiherr Marschall von Bieberstein, Flora taurico-caucasica exhibens stirpes ph¿nogamas in Chersoneso Taurica et regionibus caucasicis sponte crescentes (Charkov: 1808, 1819). Charkov. or Kharkov, was a large town now in the Ukraine.
9. Felix de Avellar Brotero (1744-1828), Flora Lusitanica, two vols (Olissipone, 1804).
10. Johann Georg Gmelin (1709–1755), Samuel Gottlieb Gmelin, Flora Sibirica, sive Historia plantarum Sibiricæ (St Petersburg: Academy of Sciences, 1747, 1769).