From Ellen Hutchins to Dawson Turner   2 Nov 1809

My dear Sir

I have been practising self-denial by not writing to you since I received your last letter & the parcel of mosses. I wished to attempt to express my thanks for them both & have delayed to do so until I could make up this parcel. I now must warmly thank you for your kind & interesting letter giving such a pleasing & at the same time, awful account of Mr Hooker’s escape & sufferings. Now that he is safe at home, I think his situation quite enviable, few have lived after having felt despair so complete or known with what degree of regret this world could be quitted. I am truly glad he has escaped to enjoy life after having passed through such a scene. It makes one shudder to think of it yet, I think I should like to know what it was to feel as he felt. I have often wished to be at sea in a storm, when escape was thought impossible. Do not pray laugh at me. I am sure Mr H would, for I dare say he may have no desire to enjoy another fire at sea. No person ought to regret the loss of his collections considering the circumstances, yet one cannot help feeling somewhat for the loss of his drawings. After your account of the miserable poverty of the Icelanders, I thought with pleasure on the comforts & comparative riches of those poor people in our mountains, whom I used to think in a wretched state. You have sent me a great treasure of mosses for drawing, enough to employ me for a considerable length of time. I beg you will not attempt to take any more of your own specimens off their paper for me. I hope that a small parcel I sent you the very day your letter arrived has long since reached you. I now send the drawings of Rivulariae that I have so much wished you to have. I hope it may be as much pleasure to you to see them as it was to me to do them. Though I am not at all satisfied with them, they are not sufficiently magnified. I have now a better microscope on the road from Dublin & next summer, I shall be able to do you more highly magnified sketches. I now send some more of the mosses you wished for & some I had not before sent together with some Jungermanniae. Let me know what you wish for more of. Dicranium rufescens you will I hope find very distinct from varium. Its serrated leaves & upright capsules distinguish it. You shall have a copy of my drawing soon. It seems to be difficult to separate D rigidulum from varium.

I am glad the beautiful little Conferva No 54 is new, what name have you given it? No 51 is I am quite sure distinct from rivaralis. It is extremely abundant in all our rivers and rivulets in Spring. When I can find it again, you shall have a drawing. I am less sure that 53 is distinct from rivularis though I rather think it is. It seems to grow only where fresh and salt water meet. I do not clearly understand rivularis. I believe I have never seen the true plant of Ulva No X. I have not at present a drawing, but next May when I can find fresh specimens, you shall have one. I greatly wish you may be able to separate Fucus No 12 from F reniformis, were it only to gratify your desire in naming it after Dr Scott. Since you last heard from me, I met with the two specimens in this parcel. They are the very best I have seen, when fresh the frond seems formed of two coats with gelatinous substance between them. I shall soon have some more Lichens to send with those you wish for. I shall also have a drawing of Fucus fruticulosus to send you —

Mr Mackay thinks that the little plant I sent you as Spergula nodosa is not that, but that it is either Spergula subulatua, or saginoides. He was not quite sure which, as he had not time to examine it sufficiently when he wrote. It cannot be Sagina procumbens I think. I believe I have Utricularia media, but not in flower. Minor is the only species common here. Mr Mackay writes me that the parcel you have sent me is on its way. I expect to have it soon. My dear Sir I have written & made up my parcel in such a hurry before breakfast that I hardly know what I have said. I always feel so important to send any thing I can find that I can hardly bear to delay for a day — I hope the drawings of the Fuci you asked for reached you safely —

believe me very faithfully

yours

E Hutchins

Ballylickey

November 2^nd 1809