Petersburg
May 3 –
My dear Henry
Sometime ago I received an old letter from you which in some degree has appeased my anger against you but on the whole you have been a very shabby correspondent – & your letter contains little more than nothing. Dr Williams <1> has after waiting a reasonable time received his specimens as I learn by a letter I received from him not long since – it is just 10 months since they were sent. Many of the plants from which my collection was made were garden plants & were sent from Sarepta<2> with the native ones. I suppose they had forgot to insert H. cereodii tho I wonder at their having it. I totally forgot the pretty anemonies – how could you like any Polygonum I hate the genus & species – I have just bought the Flora Rossica <3> in the Bazar, what do you think I gave for it? I have lately been employed in collecting all the old travels & reading them – some are become very scarce – their prints are the most execrable performances that branch of the Graphic Art ever had to be ashamed of. they are also very long & very heavy but contain a great deal of very minute & correct detail of the natural history of various parts of Russia. Messieurs les Académiciens <4> have left off the good custom of erring <5> about & publishing their errors but some works have been published lately in Berlin about the South of Russia are very interesting – especially as they comprehend in 2 vols. 8vo what Gmelin <6> or Falk<7> &c would have made 3 or 4 quarto vols. of – I hope you learn German you will find it quite necessary for natural history to be able to read travels & dissertations of their innumerable professors & doctors – which are never or very slowly translated – besides which it is very easy to learn as much as is necessary for that only, if you decline burthening yourself with any more
I have been trying to get the Flora [illegible] but cannot find it anywhere. Did you ever try the Chinese method of dwarfing plants described in the first enbassy [sic] to China?<8> You desire to have had a letter from Moscow did I not write you a very long one thence with the whole history of Count Alexy Razoumovsky’s <9> hothouse – & Dr Fisher? <10> Have you ever seen Tygophyllum Fabago I have lately received seeds of it from Astracan<11>
Since I began this letter I have received some seeds from the Caucasus some of which I send you perhaps it would be a Charity to send some of them to Penrice <12> which I will beg of you to do if you think they have not got them already – I believe they have there all possible out of doors plants –
I could fill up all this sheet to you but I will not for you do not deserve it –
At last I have tumbled on the subjoined Square botanical commodity which I hope you may not in the meanwhile have procured elsewhere Do you know Gossypium herbacium? I have a plan for cultivating it in England – Have you seen Mr Salisbury <13> lately? Webb <14> I hear is coming out here to botanize in the Steppes – Are the tritraria or Gypsophilæ known anywhere on sea coasts as well as by saltlakes? What makes grecian barley stunted in so fine a climate?
Answer this & I am Yr Aff
W T H F S
W H F Talbot Esqre
31 Sackville Street
London
Notes:
1. George Williams (1762-1834), Regius Professor of Botany at Oxford University - see Doc. No: 00781.
2. Sarepta, a German settlement on the Volga River.
3. Peter Simon Pallas (1741–1811), Flora Rossica … (St Petersburg: J. J. Weilbrecht, 1784, 1788).
4. The Gentlemen of the Academy.
5. ‘Pun on err’, that is, ‘wander’.
6. Probably Johann Georg Gmelin (1709–1755), professor of chemistry and natural history at St Petersburg, author of Flora Sibirica, 4 volumes, (1740–1750), but possibly his nephew Samuel Gottlieb Gmelin (1743–1774), also professor of natural history at St Petersburg, who travelled in southern Russia 1767–1774.
7. John Peter Falk (1727-1774), Swedish botanist.
8. Lord George Macartney (1737-1806) was the first British ambassador to China, 1792-1794. The Chinese way of making dwarf trees was reported to London by the mission.
9. Count Alexy Razoumovsky (1748-1822) was reported to have 42 hothouses at his gardens at Gorinka. Also see Doc. No: 00790.
10. Probably Fischer; Johann Gotthelf Fischer von Waldheim (1773-1853), Professor of Natural History at Moscow University. [See Doc. No: 00426, Doc. No: 00334, and especially Doc. No: 00790].
11. Astrakhan was a town and region on the River Volga near to the Caspian Sea.
12. Penrice Castle and Penrice House, Gower, Glamorgan, 10 mi SW of Swansea: home of Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot.
13. Possibly Richard Anthony Salisbury (1761–1829).
14. Philip Barker Webb (1793–1854). He went to Turkey in 1818 but not to Russia.