TALBOT2622

Glasgow.
March 2. 1833

My dear Sir

I will name your ferns ¹ as far as I am able with great pleasure; though if the collection is at all considerable not perhaps as speedily as you & I could wish. For to name them correctly they must be compared with the same species in my Herbarium & my very busy time, when I am preparing for my lectures, is arrived, & that employment & my botanical publications keep me so employed engaged that I have very little leisure. I shall do my best. If you will leave the parcel with M^r Hunneman ², n^o. 9 Queen street Soho, it will come with my other packages sufficiently expeditiously.

As I intend publishing a list of all Drummond ³’s discoveries & mark the stations of the respective plants, there can be no great difficulty with the assistance of Pursh ⁴ in referring the names to the right individuals. In regard to my Bot^l Miscellany, New Series, ⁵ I have just had an answer from Treuttel & Wurtz ⁶, to my enquiry respecting their terms of publication. They have the conscience to ask £40 pr cash as their own profit; £20 for advertizing the first year & £10 for every succeeding year!! What is to become of a poor Author who gets into the hands of such merciless wretches. I wish indeed that something could be done to favor useful publications by the Government: but œconomy is now the order of the day; & I am afraid I shall not live to see the time when the nation will patronize Science & the Arts ⁷ & when an author ity may be sure, if his work has merit, that one body will take 50 copies. It was exactly such a patronage on the part of the E. I. C^o. ⁸ that enabled Wallich ⁹ to publish his splendid “ Icones ¹⁰”.

Believe me, my dear Sir, most faithfully Yours
W. J. Hooker.

H. F. Talbot Esq^re M.P.
Sackville street
London.