Glasgow.
Nov. 30.
My dear Sir
You have heard I doubt not doubt of poor Drummond’s <1> death which took place in Cuba. A little before that event I received the last of his collections which are the best of all: from the interior of Texas in Mexico. At length, after infinite labor, I have arranged them, divided them among the Subscribers & numbered them & sent them off. Your set is gone to the care of Mr Hunneman, <2> 9, Queen street Soho & you will perhaps be good enough to send there for them; or inform Mr H. where he shall send them. There is also a a [sic] small parcel from Apalachicola in East Florida. You who are fond of cultivating plants may probably find some good seeds among them, especially of Phlox Drummondii & Pentstemon Cobća & [Mesuazenum?]: – 3 splendid species.
You will probably have seen by my Companion to the Botl Magazine <3> that I am getting on with my list of Drummond’s Louisiana & United states collections. Then will follow the Texas ones. The Scrophulariaceć Bentham <4> is at this time preparing for publication; & the Tribe Gerardieć will appear in the Jany & Feby numbers of my Journal. <5>
Do you know Mr Jos. Woods, <6> who is preparing a work on Europćan plants & who appears to know the Italian ones remarkably well? I hear that a M. Des Bieux has been botanizing, & successfully in Spain, & has just arrived at Paris with his collections. I trust to be able to obtain a set of them, for I am told they are to be sold like Drummond’s.
Believe me to be, my dear Sir, most faithfully Yours,
W. J. Hooker.
H. F. Talbot Esqre
29. Abemarle [sic] street
London.
Lacock Abbey <7>
Chippenham
Wilts
Enqre <8> at Lady Feilding’s
31 Sackville Str
Notes:
1. Thomas Drummond (1793-1835), Scottish botanical collector; died in Cuba in early March 1835.
2. James Hunneman, London nurseryman.
3. William Jackson Hooker, Companion to the Botanical Magazine; being a journal, containing such interesting botanical information as does not come within the prescribed limits of the magazine… (London: S. Curtis, 1835–1836).
4. George Bentham (1800–1884), philosopher & botanist.
5. William Jackson Hooker, The Journal of botany (London; Edinburgh: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green & Longman etc., A. & C. Black, 1834–1842).
6. Joseph Woods (1776–1864), botanist etc. His Tourist’s Flora: a descriptive Catalogue of the Flowering Plants and Ferns of the British Islands, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and the Italian Islands was eventually published in 1850.
7. Readdressed in another hand.
8. The remaining part of this letter is written in another hand.