Athenæum <1>
July 12th
My Dear Talbot
I regretted much on calling at your house today to find that you had left London – It is so long since we had met that I was anxious to see you – and also wished to thn thank you for the copy of your works which you sent me. – The Tales <2> I have not yet had time to peruse – in your proposals for reform I partly agree, tho’ I think that many difficulties would occur in your plan of balloting &c but from what I have seen in our Northumberland Elections I am sure that an alteration is much needed –
I left for you at 31 Sackville St <3> a copy of an Antiquarian Tract I lately edited. –
I wish you could in the course of this summer pay another visit to Northumberland, I should like to shew you some new localities for rare plants &c I was lately in the upper part of Teesdale which is probably the best botanical district in England – Gentiana verna, Bartschia <sic> alpina, Equisetum variegatum, Thlaspi alpestre, Potentilla fruticosa, Juncus triglumis &c and several rare musci &c are there abundant. Last year I found in Yorkshire, Protococcus nivalis. – Have you seen Dr Grevilles <4> Algologia? – What a splendid work Wallichs <5> is – & Hookers <6> Icones filicum – I am sorry he has discontinued the Miscellanea botanica. – What do you think of his English flora? <7> –
Believe me
My Dear Talbot –
yours very truly
W. C. Trevelyan
Have you seen Johnsons Flora of Berwick on Tweed? <8> –W. H. F. Talbot Esqre
Laycock Abbey
Chippenham
Notes:
1. Athenaeum Club, Pall Mall, London: WHFT’s club; a gentleman’s club composed primarily of artists and scientists.
2. WHFT, Legendary Tales, in Verse and Prose (London: James Ridgway, 1830).
3. 31 Sackville Street, London residence of the Feildings, often used as a London base by WHFT.
4. Robert Kaye Greville (1794–1866), botanist, author of Algæ Britannicæ (1830).
5. Nathaniel Wallich (1786–1854), botanist and plant collector.
6. Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785–1865), Prof & botanist. He wrote Icones filicum ad eas potissimum species illustrandas destinatæ… in conjunction with Greville (London: 1829).
7. Hooker’s The English flora of Sir James Edward Smith: Class XXIV. Cryptogamia was published in 1833, but he had previously published in conjunction with Smith and M. J. Berkeley, The English flora (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1824–1836).
8. Dr George Johnston (1797–1855), Flora of Berwick upon Tweed (1829–1831).