JDH has been in Chittagong about a week & been welcomed by Mr Sconce, a judge & relation of [Thomas] Thomson [TT], & by the Latours who are civil servants. Sconce grows coffee, tea & pepper & makes bandages from Callicarpa bark. For the museum JDH is sending: articles made of common Mura at the convent, Gurjan oil made from Dipterocarpus, & curious items from Sylhet. En route to Chittagong JDH stopped at Noakolly at the mouth of the Megna & stayed with Dr Baker, a wealthy man on the Government Salt Commission. Baker's wife knows about Suffolk & Halesworth & remembers JDH as a baby. JDH has not received WJH’s letter about Ceylon [Sri Lanka]. TT goes home by the Feb Steamer, JDH may go with him or to Arracan [Arakan, Burma]. Maria told TT's sister WJH had been ill. JDH has declined Colvile's offer to go to Nepal as physician to Lord Grosvenor. JDH is disappointed there is no maritime vegetation in Chittagong, no Mangrove, Avicennias, Rhyzphora [Rhizophora] or even herbaceous salt water plants other than Ipomoea pes Caprae. Inland there is hill & forest vegetation & JDH & TT have collected 300 species in the scrub near the station incl. Linastoma, Memecylon, Rubiaceae, Jasmine & Calamus. Further inland they hope to find palms. The only person in the area interested in plants is Mrs Captain Mathison, formerly Miss Chapman, daughter of a naval officer at Lowestoft. It has been a long time since JDH got any botanical news. Reeve has asked, secretly, for names of people who will subscribe to a lithograph of [William] Tayler's portrait of JDH. There was bad weather on the voyage from Sylhet, some dried Orchideae were damaged but JDH is used to this after Sikkim & is trying to recover them. JDH will write to WJH by the Marseille mail.
The Joseph Dalton Hooker Collection
The Joseph Dalton Hooker Correspondence Project at Kew is making available online the personal and scientific correspondence of the botanist and explorer Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911), Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens’ Kew from 1865-1885. The project was conceived by staff of The University of Sussex and Kew's Library, Art and Archive department and began as a partnership between Kew and the University of Sussex's Centre for World Environmental History. It has been made possible by support from the Stevenson Family Charitable Trust. Letter summaries can be searched through Ɛpsilon, with links to images and transcriptions at the project site at Kew (https://www.kew.org/explore-our-collections/correspondence-collections/joseph-hooker-collections).