Glasgow.
Feb. 19. 1834
My dear Sir
I shall indeed most thankfully accept your kind offer <1> to dispatch the plants to Bertoloni <2> & perhaps you can at the same time send one to Gussone. <3> I do not know his exact address, but Mrs Palliser tells me that he passes the great part of the year with Tenore, <4> to whom I lately sent a complete copy of Fl. Londinensis, <5> through Mrs Palliser. I hope to obtain some good Sicilian plants from Gussone & I have put up for him & for Bertoloni each nearly 300 species <6> of our best & most peculiar species. Such as I had of the desiderata you mentioned, I have sent in your name to Bertoloni. But I regret to say I have not all, en double <7>; not because they are so rare, but because they are so common. I never thought to keep duplicates of Artemisia gallica & maritima, & Cnicus palustris & Vicia Cracca – but I will obtain good specimens for him another year. My two parcels in question went to Mr Hunnemans <8> last saturday with many others in two large Boxes. If you will commit the enclosed to the 2dy P. Office <9>, Mr Hunneman will send to your House, Bertoloni’s & Gussone’s parcel, as soon as they shall have arrived. But as the Boxes are sent by sea, they may yet be some days before they reach the Thames.
I have no Ionian Plants from you, & shall be thankful for any you can conveniently spare. They will be doubly valuable if you will prepare a notice of what you have found, which I shall most gladly publish in my “ Botl. Journal." <10> I hope you will equally mention those that the French Scientific Commission have published, so as to secure to yourself the priority of the discovery: & if you can intersperse some remarks upon the use of the species or upon the Classical History, or if you can add any little general sketch of Grecian Vegetation it will render the paper the more interesting to the general reader. I shall be happy to receive anything from your pen & I wish I could engage others equally competent to take an interest in the “Journal” & to encourage it. Pray in what form have the French published the plants of the Morea? Is it a separate work, or given in some Journal. The 3 Nos of Bertoloni’s I will thankfully accept. I have none of his works: but I am well pleased with the account you give of his labors.
You will do a great service to Science if you will petition the H. of Commons to allow Naturalists to communicate with each other more readily & at less expense, under certain restrictions. I am sure I, for one, shd rejoice if such a plan could be contrived. I have literally been cut off from all communication with Italy Vienna &c from the great difficulties & expences incurred: & I can truly say that without your kind assistance I could have devised no means for getting the plants to Bertoloni & Gussone. Mrs Palliser before she can dispatch my copy of Fl. Lond. To Rome must write to ask how it can be sent. I shall not forget your Texas & N. Orleans plants & will put names to some before sending them. Seeds & roots are daily expected from Drummond, <11> gathered in Texas.
Very faithfully Yours
W. J. Hooker.
H. F. Talbot Esq. M.P.
31. Sackville street
London.
Notes:
1. See Doc. No: 02806.
2. Prof Antoine Bertoloni (1793–1868), Italian botanist.
3. Giovanni Gussone (1787–1866), Italian botanist.
4. Michel Tenore (1780–1861), Italian botanist & traveller.
5. William Curtis, Flora Londinensis …, with continuation [vols. IV and V] by William Jackson Hooker (London: G. Graves, 1817–1828).
6. Specimens.
7. In duplicate.
8. James Hunneman, London nurseryman
9. Twopenny Post Office.
10. William Jackson Hooker, The Journal of Botany (London, Edinburgh: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green & Longman etc.; A & C Black, 1834–1842).
11. Thomas Drummond (1793-1835), Scottish botanical collector; died in Cuba in early March 1835.