Glasgow.
March 2. 1833
My dear Sir
I will name your ferns <1> as far as I am able with great pleasure; though if the collection is at all considerable not perhaps as speedily as you & I could wish. For to name them correctly they must be compared with the same species in my Herbarium & my very busy time, when I am preparing for my lectures, is arrived, & that employment & my botanical publications keep me so employed engaged that I have very little leisure. I shall do my best. If you will leave the parcel with Mr Hunneman <2>, no. 9 Queen street Soho, it will come with my other packages sufficiently expeditiously.
As I intend publishing a list of all Drummond <3>’s discoveries & mark the stations of the respective plants, there can be no great difficulty with the assistance of Pursh <4> in referring the names to the right individuals. In regard to my Botl Miscellany, New Series, <5> I have just had an answer from Treuttel & Wurtz <6>, to my enquiry respecting their terms of publication. They have the conscience to ask £40 pr cash as their own profit; £20 for advertizing the first year & £10 for every succeeding year!! What is to become of a poor Author who gets into the hands of such merciless wretches. I wish indeed that something could be done to favor useful publications by the Government: but œconomy is now the order of the day; & I am afraid I shall not live to see the time when the nation will patronize Science & the Arts <7> & when an author ity may be sure, if his work has merit, that one body will take 50 copies. It was exactly such a patronage on the part of the E. I. Co. <8> that enabled Wallich <9> to publish his splendid “ Icones <10>”.
Believe me, my dear Sir, most faithfully Yours
W. J. Hooker.
H. F. Talbot Esqre M.P.
Sackville street
London.
Notes:
1. See Doc. No: 02613, to which this is the reply.
2. James Hunneman, London nurseryman.
3. Thomas Drummond (1793-1835), Scottish botanical collector; died in Cuba in early March 1835.
4. Frederick Persh (1774–1820), author of the Flora Americæ Septentrionalis … (London: White, Cochrane, 1814).
5. William Jackson Hooker, Botanical miscellany, containing figures and descriptions … together with occasional botanical notices and information … (London: J. Murray, 1830–1833).
6. Treuttel & Wurtz, booksellers, Paris.
7. See Doc. No: 02607.
8. That is, the East India Company.
9. Nathaniel Wallich (1786–1854), botanist and plant collector.
10. Probably Nathaniel Wallich (1786–1854), Plantæ Asiaticæ rariores… (London, Paris, Strasburg: Treuttel & Würtz, 1830–1832).