From Dawson Turner to Ellen Hutchins   12 Nov 1809

My dear Madam

By some provoking delay, for which I am unable to account, your letter, though dated so long ago as the 9th of October, did not find its way to Yarmouth till the night before last, &, as I am sure you would be glad to hear of the safety of what you sent me, I lose no time in acquainting you with its arrival, although I believe that you are at this very moment, no less than three letters in my debt. You see that I, who am of all men alive the most remiss as a correspondent, am, like most other people, who are conscious of their feelings, heartedly glad of an opportunity to boast of my punctuality, but in so doing, I am very far indeed from wishing to insinuate that I consider the balance as at all equal between us. On the contrary I feel & own myself in every sense of the word infinitely your debtor, &, not least, for the beautiful set of drawings contained in your last pacquet. I never in my life saw anything that pleased me better than the Conferva equisetifolia, & the Fucus kaliformis is so little inferior to it that I feel more than half tempted to have it engraved. F dasphyllus is certainly not exactly like the plant as it comes here, for it never has that bright colour nor is it ever equally large with us, & F clavellosus, I am concerned to say, does not altogether meet my idea of the plant, about which I fear I am grown unreasonably & absurdly fastidious by looking at my own wretched figure which I have fully determined to replace as soon as I can by a good one. F Griffithsiae, asparagoides and wigghi are excellent. The latter of these plants puzzles me sadly, & sets at nought all my ideas about the generic difference between Fuci & Rivulariae, for its stem has the texture of those & its branches of the second. In such a dilemma, que faire? Tis sadly plaguing, that such things should be allowed to exist to perplex us, poor naturalists. While you send me such drawings as these I shall go on eternally begging, & shall cease to ask you for plants. The Rivulariae thus done will be particularly a treasure, for you know that when once dried they never recover: it is a pity indeed that your microscope is not one of the best. This makes me still more wish you could be here & use mine, tho’ I acknowledge with pleasure that the reasons you give against coming at present to Yarmouth do too much honour to your head & your heart for me to attempt to urge a single one in opposition to them, & yet I trust I may be allowed to hope that in the course of next summer, such a temporary Lieutenante may be found for you at Bantry as may allow you to favour us with your company. I forget whether I told you in any of my late letters that your Fucus No 12 is the variety b of F laciniatus, to which species I had referred it upon poor Scott’s authority, but had afterwards expressed doubt similar to yours, if it did not rather belong to F reniformis. As this plant appears to be unknown to you, I enclose a morsel of it, which, however poor, will give you some idea of it, & is moreover, I am sorry to say, the whole of it that I have now to send. Have you yet received my packets of mosses and lichens? At your leisure I shall be very glad to hear that you have done so. I find that Mr Hooker has saved, what I did not expect, the first 10 days of his Icelandic journal, containing the account of his journey to the Geyser. I have prevailed with him to add to it, whatever else he may recollect, & to print (but not publish) it for the amusement of his friends, among whom you will allow me to insert your name as far as the procuring of a copy for you goes, [illegible] be continued only in manuscript, I will take care you should see it. I wish I could find time to rewrite my own Scottish journal, & I am not sure I should not print it in the same way to give away among my friends, through I assuredly will never exhibit myself to the public, while I have the use of my senses, as the author, either of a tour, a novel, or a poem. In the course of last week, I had the pleasure of hearing of you through Mr Leach, whom I accidentally met for a few hours in Norwich. it was our first meeting and I was pleased to see the zeal with which he is prosecuting natural history. I have not yet heard if Woods is returned, nor can I get word from Dillwyn, who, I am sorry to find, is fretted by the ill usage of a man with whom he was connected, & is likely to be engaged in lawsuits. With the conclusion of his Confervae, he seems also to have concluded his care for botany. Mr Leach told me that Woods would certainly publish his tour, & if so, I think it probable he will soon come to Yarmouth to compare his mosses with my collection. I do not say how glad I shall be to hear from you, nor with how much esteem I am

My dear Madam, Your much obliged.

D Turner.

Yarmouth, 12th of November 1809.

If you can form any judgement from these wretched scraps of F reinformis pray tell me if they can be the same as your No 12, which otherwise I should be very glad to publish as a new species with the name of poor Scott, who first found it, and say under it all I know of his short & simple history. He is a man whom I would fain not have go down

“To the vile dust, from when he sprung,

“Unhonoured and unsung. —

Unwept, I am sure he will not be.