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Document number: 702
Date: 23 Jun 1816
Dating: 1816? see Doc no 00707
Recipient: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Author: NICHOLL Jane Harriot, née Talbot
Collection: British Library, London, Manuscripts - Fox Talbot Collection
Last updated: 21st February 2012

Penrice <1>
June 23d

My dear Henry,

I am very glad our correspondance [sic] has begun again as it had stopped for so long but I hope now we shall have frequent communications of our thoughts & discoveries. Since I wrote last I had the good fortune to find Polystichum alpinum, on the top of the Cairne on Cyfn Bryn & likewise either Sedum dasyphyllus or anglica album a beautiful little thing. I have been employed in Engraving on Stone since I came home I don’t know whether you have seen any, I will send you two of my performances – I think it is a delightful discovery because the Etching on Copper was so very tedious, & besides being obliged to have a separate Plate for different subjects, (which was expensive) it was liable to so many misfortunes – Now one stone serves for my life I have nothing to do but take as many impressions as I like & clean the Stone ready for any thing else I please. I have drawn six of the Phascums you sent me – & Etched the four I send – I magnified them with the 2d magr & I hope you will find them correct. I have the intention to magnify all I possess that are in a good state for shewing the character of the Moss. The worst is I hurt my eyes so terribly by straining them thro’ the Microscope that I am afraid of doing them some injury. Pray send me some of the Mosses you made out at Sowerby’s, never mind a double letter for once.

Monday

I have just received your letter <2> from Castleford, I have not words to express my envy of your acquaintance with Mr Hooker <3> – Whenever any of those clever people will be a little communicative I feel particularly obliged to them – I always thought the distinction between Bryum [bimum?], ventricosum, & turbinatum, was so slight as hardly to constitute a separate genus species – I will send you what I found & think to be ventricosum & turbinatum. If Mr H. thinks the leaves will be sufficient to distinguish Mosses, I wonder how he will make out B. turbinatum & ve[ntm?] to be the same, for the leaves are totally [illegible deletion] different – Pray tell me which of Smiths <4> Phascum’s he thinks varieties. Those you gave me are certainly mixed but have [sic] not separated them – & till I have your opinion I will leave them alone – I never saw your H. piliferum. I wish you had had all my Lichens at Sowerby’s <5> to make out I have no book nor nothing to make them out by I intend saving my money till I can buy Hooker’s Jungermanniæ or Mr Dillwyn’s <6> Confervæ – which shall it be? but I have not got the money yet. I saw Mr Brown <7> when I was at Sir Joseph’s <8> but altho’ I talked to him I cannot say I got acquainted with him he is not at all communicative did you see his New Holland Work? it is exquisite – I was never more perplexed in my life than I was there by not knowing what to look at, every work was so splendid Dr Holland <9> who wrote travells [sic] with in Albania was there I afterwards got very well acquainted with him in one evening at Lansdowne House. <10> He sent Mary <11> some stones a piece of Marble of which the Parthenon is built, a piece of Granite or Serpentine from the top of Mt Pindus & some of the deposits of the boiling springs in Iceland – & several other Icelandic specimens

Yours truly
Jane

Who went with you to Sir J. Banks’s?

Wm Henry Fox Talbot Esqre
Revd Mr Barnes’s <12>
Castleford
Ferrybridge


Notes:

1. Penrice Castle and Penrice House, Gower, Glamorgan, 10 mi SW of Swansea: home of Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot.

2. Letter not located.

3. Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785–1865), Prof & botanist. [See Doc. No: 00134].

4. Sir James Edward Smith, who wrote Introduction to Physiological & Systematic Botany (London: Longman, Hurst, Reese, Orme, and White, 1807). [See Doc. No: 00569].

5. Possibly George Brettingham Sowerby (1788–1854), naturalist.

6. Lewis Weston Dillwyn (1778–1855), Welsh botanist & MP.

7. Robert Brown (1773–1858). [See Doc. No: 00264].

8. Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820), botanist, president of the Royal Society.

9. Sir Henry Holland (1788–1873), Travels in the Ionian Isles, Albania, Thessaly, Macedonia, … during the years 1812 and 1813 (London: London, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1815).

10. Lansdowne House, London: home of the Marquis of Lansdowne, WHFT's uncle and cousins.

11. Mary Thereza Talbot (1795–1861), WHFT’s cousin.

12. Rev Theophilus Barnes (1774 –1855), of Castleford.

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