[The wrapper for this letter is in a private collection:]
Hy Fox Talbot Esqr
Revd Mr Bonney's
Normanton
Stamford
_____
February 1817
My Dear Henry
I enclose your four Seeds which have put me in a grand frenzy They are marked No51 in Mr Jones's List & are consequently Ixias, which are bulbs How therefore can this be right? I am stopped in the middle of my career by this difficulty & dont like to send them to Ly Bath <1> till it is cleared up, so make haste & write. When I came to unpack the seeds there are so very few that I dont know how I can subdivide them so as to please all parties, for 1 infinitely divided is equal to 0. The Bulletin about Lord James Murray's palpitatio cordis <2> is very good, cut it out for me Adieu
Write, & dont be so extraordinarily brief i.e. if you can help it
Plant the 4 Seeds & see what they turn out
Notes:
1. Isabella Elizabeth Thynne, née Byng, Lady Bath (d. 1830).
2. Palpitation of the heart. Customarily styled 'Lord James Murray, the 1st Lord Glenlyon (1782-1837) was in a coach with the Prince Regent when it was attacked by an angry mob. He testified that two of holes in the window glass must have been made by bullets and described them in great detail. Firing on the Prince Regent would have been an act of high treason on the part of the shooter, but unfortunately, the glass was subsequently shattered by a stone and thus the evidence was destroyed. Murray's story was widely discredited, but he did suffer permanent eye damage from fragments of glass.