F. O <1>.
22 Mar
Dear Henry
When are you coming I have received some interesting seeds from Sicily. Some would interest you but I do not know whether you wish for them at Lacock, they are from Prof. Tineo <2> who says his garden is much enriched & improved with buildings – how they get the money I wonder.
I am not going to Dorsetshire till 5th of April – it sounds ominous staying exactly to quarter day, Ld Eliots <3> Spanish motion being on the 29th – but I cannot get away before.
Have you heard of Arnotts <4> new economical steam apparatus? it will lower the price of coals wonderfully.
Yrs
W F S
Notes:
1. The Foreign Office.
2. Professor Vincenzo Tineo (1791–1856), Italian botanist, director of the botanical garden and professor of botany at Palermo.
3. Edward Granville Eliot, 3rd Earl of St Germans (1798–1877), Envoy extraordinary to Spain 1834–1837. His motion relating to British subjects enrolling in Spain's army was defeated on 28 March 1838.
4. He was possibly referring to Neil Arnott (1788–1874), who published On Heating and Ventilating in 1838. Its major contribution was a vastly more efficient heating stove; however, this did not rely on steam. Possibly he meant Dr Andrew Fyfe's (1792-1861) "On the Use of Steam in Economising Fuel", first published in The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, v. 23 no. 45, July 1837, but still in the news a year later.