TALBOT1333

F. ¹
Dec 10.

My dear Henry

You surprise me by saying you were never on the top of Abbotsbury Castle till you walked there the other day. I do not wonder you made no botanical observations – in the summer there are some good bog plants, & I imagine, a good harvest of mosses. I am afraid my plantations of Andromedas, Sedum &c are come to nothing but it is something that a Calla flowered there, & I found it by its flower after 4 years absence – & it may be creeping on there still – I imagine game laws & rights of common are extremely inimical to naturalisations & even to native botany. – In geology if I had been with you I could have shown you some thing, for in leaving Melbury ² you ascend an Escarpment, get upon a tableland, cross various denudations cut into the substrata the same as shewn in the Escarpment, & between the denudations you just touch upon outliers of a tertiary basin supported by the tableland, (quite a new unconformable & overlying formation,) & descend another Escarpment to Abbotsbury ³

You delayed your visit to the garden so long that I did not learn half what I expected from you – If the Yucca was really above 8 feet & a half high with 42 branches & 200 flowers, it must have given a very tolerable idea of an Agave to those who have never seen the original. I dare say my Agaves when they flower will not be much bigger – certainly the Yuccas here are not near that size – I am glad to hear that Teucrium flourishes, when I left it it was in the mud. How can you pretend not to recognise Verbascum phœnicium & Euphorbia myrsinites? – 2 principal favorites of mine. I depended upon your noticing (if it is still there) Euphorbia dendroides, & ceratocarpa of Tenore, ⁴ very distinct from the nearest species to it in the Garden here, E. palustris. I thought you would have been attracted by the novelty of Cassias out of doors, & many others – Were you not struck with Campanula fragilis & were there no bulbs in flower? I hope the walls were as I desired tapissés de ⁵ Disandra, Mesembryanth. Chinese Saxifrage Did you ever see Salvia campestris, & virgata before – But you should have gone in the summer. You will never see Pisum maritimum.

I am glad you have heard of the Sardinian – My Corsican has sent me nothing, not even a pair of Moufflons which he promised, tho I don’t know what I should do with them. I have sent Jane ⁶ some plants lately which you must go & see. What is a Cynomosium? I hope you will give me an account of the Moreton ⁷ plants soon, I am sending large lots to H^{t 8} every day. I wish I could cure her of the funest habitude ⁹ of transplanting her plants, all & some, as the Romances say, twice a year. I have not much faith in your Experiment (until it is made) of the Muriate of lime, besides I do not know where to get Muriate of lime. I think the sea air & calcareous soil at Abbotsbury & Penrice ¹⁰ supplies the plants with Muriate of lime sufficiently I wish you could bring some dried specimens of N. Holland ¹¹ or other new plants, for Raddi, ¹² who has none, or very bad ones of some old inhabitants of our G. houses. Mexican I think would be particularly interesting. And if you would do as I believe you did in your last tour, bring some of our English publications it would be a great treat to him to see them & I could send them back by Couriers after you go on to Corfu.

I suppose you will frequent M^r Lamberts ¹³ in London – Look well over Sibthorp’s Flora Græca, ¹⁴ & read his journals &c in Walpoles Turkish Collection ¹⁵ which you may have seen at Abbotsbury – There is a Prodromus Fl. Græcæ ¹⁶ in 8vo. –

John ¹⁷ being gone to Egypt has sent Saverio ¹⁸ here, & when he returns will I suppose only go straight home to England, probably with some companion & without Saverio. If you have no Servant, Saverio would make a very good one for those parts, if you could come out with a temporary one.

Y^rs Aff^te
W T H F S

Henry Talbot Esq^r
31 Sackville Street
London