TALBOT2607

Glasgow.
Feb. 23. 1833.

My dear Sir

The bulb you allude to,¹ in the New Orleans Collection,² is Allium Canadense (n. 351). I could only render my specimens fit for the Herbarium by immersing them in hot water. The Grass with a solitary curved spike is a very beautiful & very rare one, the Monocera aromatica of Elliott (Ctenium Americanum Spreng).³ I have the list of the New Orleans plants ready for the press (& of the others nearly so) & I shall insert it in the Botanical Miscellany⁴ with some remarks on the new or rare species. I am only waiting in the hope of finding a Bookseller for this work. You know perhaps that Murray⁵ saved me from any very heavy loss on the 3 first volumes by being the publisher – but he only stipulated to go to the end of the third volume. I have now printed the 1^st part of a New Series, but though I offer it for the bare cost of printing, I cannot find another publisher & I fear I must issue it at my own risk. The loss however to me, as a private individual, will I am sure be such that I shall not be able to carry it on beyond another volume. A Bookseller alone can make it answer. It is really hard that England cannot support a work of this kind, while Germany has her Botanische Zeitung &c, & France has her Annales des Sc. Nat.⁶ & a host of others.

Mr Murray⁷ I am sure would be glad of some seeds from Calabria & Sicily. He (not I) has the entire charge of the Bot^l Garden here. He by the bye has rec^d, for sale, several sets of Louisiana seeds from Drummond^<8>, from 130–140 kinds. All are bespoken except one set. Would you care to have it? I think M^r Murray estimates them only at 3^d or 4^d at most the packet. If you will let me know by return of post I will wait till then: otherwise I shall offer them to some one else, for this is the time for sowing them.

Perhaps the least troublesome way for you to pay the £16.12.0 will be to do so into the hands of Barclays Tritton & Bevan, Lombard street, on my account with the Yarmouth bank, at your convenience. Only let me know when it is done, as I may not hear of it for twelvemonths to come.

I do most cordially agree with you that Lady Smith ought not to have published letters to her husband, of living correspondents, without asking leave.,⁸ As far as I am concerned I regret what she has done extremely. Such letters were never intended to meet the public eye. And the Character both of the writer & the individual addressed, is rather deteriorated than raised by the publication of confidential letters. What an estimate should one form of the acquirements of Sir J. Banks⁹ & Sir T. Cullum¹⁰ & also of the Bishop of Carlisle,¹¹ were one to judge of them only from their letters in the work in question?

Most faithfully Yours
W. J. Hooker.

I hope you have observed a rare Sarracenia in the New Orleans Collection. It is the S. psittaceria of Michx,[sic]¹² which appears to have been known only to that author.