23 Octr
My dear Henry
I hope you received a parcel of plants I despatched to you the day after my return here.
Lindley <1> says your small round leaved plant like an Epacris is an unknown myrtacea so I recommend you to take care of it – he thinks it a Leptospermum in which case it may be pretty. He says the other I took to be a phillyrea is [Colliguaya?] odorata – which has no smell – I cultivated a variety of it once. it is half hardy & will do with you as a wall plant
Can you explain to me the Hieroglyphic of my seal? It is a real Egyptian.<2>
I like the review of Arago in the Edinburgh. <3>
Theodore <4> has been to enter at Oxford. Jane <5> is at Merthyr M. <6> at last.
I shall send you more plants from Abbotsbury. <7>
Yr aff
W Strangways
We have Ip. <10> bona nox in great beauty every night
Notes:
1. Prof John Lindley (1799–1865), botanist.
2. Perhaps because of WHFT's interest in Cuneiform, his uncle was confident that he could decipher hieroglypics as well.
3. A review of several works by Dominique François Jean Arago (1786–1853), physicist and astronomer, in the Edinburgh Review, v. 104 no. 212, October 1856, pp. 155-173.
4. Theodore Mansel Talbot (1839–1876), WHFT’s Welsh nephew.
5. Jane Harriot Nicholl, née Talbot (1796–1874).
6. Merthyr Mawr, Glamorgan, on River Ogwr.
7. Abbotsbury, Dorset: home of William Thomas Horner Fox Strangways.
8. Charlton Park, near Malmesbury.
9. Breamore House is actually in Hampshire [near Fordingbridge], but not far from the Wiltshire border.
10. Ipomoea.