My dear Henry,
I send you a moss as H. palustris which may, or may not, be it – my specimen certainly agrees better than the enclosed with Smiths* <1> description,
and was found in a different place, but I looked there in vain, my search for H: filicimum in fruit was likewise unproductive, it is later this year than last, for I do not think by the look of the shoots, it will produce any for this month to come, I have squeezed off a bit [illegible deletion] of my own specimen, which small as it is, will I hope enable you to tell me I am not wrong in calling it filicimum –
Caroline <2> has got the seven first numbers of Mr Hooker, <3> I am delighted with them but cannot help trembling for his life, I know so many people who have died almost directly that they have begun publishing in numbers – pray enquire after his health now & then – I verily believe one of the mosses I found in the Isle of Mann [sic] was the Weissia Templetonii which Mr Hooker says was has never been found before out of Ireland – Hypnum tenellium grows upon Giles’s <4> grotto here, – do you understand the grasses? I wish I did, but they appear very difficult – Mr Oglander<5> Sir William’s brother, found Hookeria lucens & what I think must be Encalypta vulgans somewhere near Parnham – Caroline desires her love to you –
Yrs sincerely
A. M. Murray
*N.B. don’t find fault with my quoting him I must do so while Mr Hooker’s work is only in progress –.
Sherborne, May twenty Eight, Ilchester <6>
W. H. Talbot Esqr
Revd Mr Bonney’s <7>
Normanton
Stamford
Notes:
1. Sir James Edward Smith who wrote Introduction to Physiological & Systematic Botany (London: Longman, Hurst, Reese, Orme, and White, 1807).
2. Caroline Augusta Edgcumbe, née Feilding, Lady Mt Edgcumbe (1808–1881); WHFT’s half-sister.
3. Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785–1865), Prof & botanist. From 1817 to 1828 Hooker wrote the descriptions for a serialised publication of a new edition of William Curtis’s Flora Londinensis (London: George Graves, Richard, and Arthur Taylor, 1817–1828).
4. Probably Giles Digby Robert Fox Strangways.
5. John Oglander (d 1825) was a fellow of Merton, and was mentioned in A Botanical Description of British Plants in the Midland Countie(1798–1827).
6. Henry Stephen Fox Strangways, 3rd Earl of Ilchester (1787–1858).
7. Thomas Kaye Bonney (1782–1863), Archdeacon of Leicester.