Calais
June 9
My dear Henry
Since I left Lyons I have seen very little indeed that is interesting in any point of view – & the cold weather & clouds & backwardness of the season on this side the Alps is so striking that it seems as if a whole summer had passed away quicker than usual & winter was coming again. I took the road to Paris by Moulins & Nevers & excepting the first days journey from Lyons, it is very dull, & the poorest looking part of France I have seen. The Puy de Dome & other Mountains of Auvergne were as completely covered with snow as the Abruzzi we saw from Rome there was snow even on the lower ridges of hills in the Lyonnais. On the granitic hills between the Rhone & Loire I found quantities of Echium vulgare of the true blue colour, tige dressée <1>, smooth stamina, but hairy pistil which I believe they all have & the side branches closely set & curled – of this habit [illustration] that we saw commonly in Italy which I take to be the violaceum is much more lax. I also saw Dig. purp. <2> but not so fine as in England – In the dullest country in the world, a field of corn near Moulins I found a Vicia fl. pallido vexillo glabro – stip. rot. Melampyrum arvense or cristatum very handsome – Anchusa Italica – Lithosp. arvense –. At Fontainebleau I found in the rocks a glaucous Linaria with a long spur yellow flowers much smaller than the common – & in the wood two curious Orchideæ – one just the O. Fusca in miniature which I call O fuscoides! & another green & brown thing very tall, with a sort of beard, at first I took it for O. anthropophora but rather incline to think it Satyrium as it has no spur – If I knew when you would get this I would enclose you a flower it is however like this [illustration] the root was broken but seemed palmated – I was much struck with the very septentrional aspect of the Forest of Fontainebleau those piles of rocks with birch growing among their fissures is exactly Finland on a confined scale – They say it is one of the coldest places in France in winter – & seems to lie high. This side of Paris I have found nothing whatever – The strawberries are not yet ripe – & cherries not coloured – all the avenues of Elms & indeed all the elms from Lyons here have suffered from the cold or some blight – they are green below & bare at top – I hear lamentable accounts from England of Gardenstuff – the coast looks so white I hardly know whether it is chalk or snow & the wind is blowing cold enough for either.
I was not lucky enough to find M. Gay <3> but left your things at the Luxembourg <4> – I walked briskly thro the Jardin des Plantes – which handsome as it is, is certainly neglected in some departments things marked album come up blue & yellow – four different species of sedum on coming into Flower prove the same, & in some places the weed has been cherished to the expulsion of the plant. There is a nice little garden at Lyons in the very arena of an ancient theatre a perfect concave mirror & a model for an artificial situation for an early garden tho it must be broiling in a hot summer. The Paris garden makes a genus Faba but leaves the Narbonenses out – they do not seem to possess V. Grandiflora, tricolor, or pimpinellifolia <5> – tho an incisa or some such name is down from Austria, which may be the same but is not yet in flower. If you get seeds of those species they might be well disposed of there – & correct their label of Orobus albus which is set down as from Hungary I was near doing it myself but a gardner [sic] was near & I thought I would leave that to you.
I found at Paris two most interesting letters from Petersburg – which I would send you if I was not afraid of losing them for they are too long to abstract. One is from Dr Fischer <6> the other from Mr Prescott. <7> The sum is that the Emperor has given a large island in the Neva & a considerable sum for what he calls a Jardin digne de moi et de la nation <8> & Fischer is to be Director – Gardners are already sent to Siberia & other parts to send plants for the national series & there is a Botanical Society formed at Petersburg for the furtherance of the Science & the publication of whatever rarities may be sent into them from various corners of the empire – among which they have lately got a new genus of papilionaceæ – called Güldenstädtia – where to be inserted I do not know – As Charity begins at home so this new society are beginning their labours by reforming Sobolefsky’s Flora Petropolitana <9> which will hardly be reconnaissable <10> Each member takes a different family & the Society review the labours of the individuals – & they contrive that their richest locality is never without a member
I hope you got your letter last post – Are you not sorry for Spix’s death? <11> Raddi was overjoyed at seeing Serapias microphylla. I found yesterday on the side a wood that Vicia which is so like Pseudocracca but grows so [illustration] – you will of course contrive to see Mezzofanti <12> – Let me know where to write to – Are you inclined to go to the Coronation at Warsaw? <13>
I may have an opportunity of sending you some things to Milan –
A Monsr
Monsr H. F. Talbot
Poste restante
Bologna
Notes:
1. Stem erect.
2. Digitalis purpurea.
3. Jacques Étienne Gay (1768–1864), French botanist.
4. Luxembourg Palace, built in Paris for Marie de Medicis in the years 1615–1627, it now houses the French Senate.
5. Species of Vicia.
6. See Doc. No: 00426.
7. Possibly John D Prescott (d. 1837 in Petrograd). A collector in Russia, he was a correspondent of Prof John Lindley (1799–1865), botanist, and Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785–1865), Prof & botanist. [See Doc. No: 01094].
8. A Garden worthy of myself and of the nation.
9. Gregor Sobolevsky (Sobolewski), Flora Petropolitana (St Petersburg: 1799).
10. Recognisable.
11. See Doc. No: 01446 of 18 June 1826, which dates this letter.
12. Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti (1774–1849), professor of oriental languages at Bologna until 1831; subsequently Keeper of the Vatican Library, and cardinal.
13. Of the Russian Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich (1779–1831) as Imperial Lieutenant of Poland within the Russian empire, in 1826.