Wallington
Jan 17 – 1819 –
Dear Talbot
Not having heard from you, as you gave me reason to expect, I hope your silence does not arise from indisposition.
I leave Wallington on tuesday [sic], for Oxford. The weather has been remarkably mild, but there was a slight sprinkling of snow on the night of the 15teenth.
The Ulex Europæus is in full blossom, I cut a piece measuring 10 inches & a half in circumference, & I have also got rather an antique botanical specimen; in opening the mummy of an Ibis I found the a flowering spike of a grass.
We have since we had the pleasure of seeing you here, added to our Botanical collection, a small Hortus siccus of Botany Bay plants, brought from thence by Captain, afterwards Admiral Ball, (whose death you may have lately seen in the papers) about the year 1788; and also about three or four thousand species of seeds; from Lady Wilsons collection.<1>
Did you ever see [illegible deletion] Lichen [Margissimus?] in fructification, I obtained some specimens the other day.
Shortly before I left Oxford, I purchased a work by Scheuzer, on fossil plants with some excellent representations of various species.<2>
Believe me Yours very sincerely
W C Trevelyan
W. J. F. Talbot Esqre
31. Sackville Street
Piccadilly
London
Notes:
1. Jemima Wilson, née Belford (1777–1823).
2. Johann Jakob Scheuchzer (1672–1733), Swiss savant, and geologist; Herbarium Diluvianum (Zürich: Tiguri Gessner, 1709).