My Dear Talbot
I thank you much for a specimen of your photographs which I found here on my return a few days ago from a trip to the Highlands it is one of the best I have yet seen.<1>
I am very much obliged to you for your offer of more & should much like to have a specimen of a view taken thro the Camera & of a magnified image if you have such to spare.
I know not whether I shall be at the Birmingham meeting next month,<2> but fear that it will not be in my power to attend it.
Do you still continue to add to your herbarium? If you do, I shall have much pleasure in supplying you with specimens from our collections of such of your desiderata as we can supply. We collected a good many plants in Italy & some of the rarer of the Channel Islands productions.
Do you belong to the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, or if not would you like to join it? It is acquiring a capital British Herbarium & will probably ere long publish the results of the comparison of specimens from various parts of the Kingdom. Should you wish to become a member I shall have much pleasure in proposing you.
Believe me very truly yours
W. C. Trevelyan
Notes:
1. Although this was the first WHFT photogenic drawing that Trevelyan had received, he had previously seen some produced by Allen Machonochie of Glasgow.
2. The annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in August 1839. WHFT took full advantage of this, exhibiting 93 specimens of negatives and positives. They were listed in a pamphlet, A Brief Description of the Photogenic Drawings Exhibited at the Meeting of the British Association, at Birmingham, in August, 1839, by H. F. Talbot, Esq..