TALBOT2858

Penrice ¹
23 March

My dear Henry

I mean to leave this Easter Monday & to find you at Lacock about Thursday next – I must contrive to see Margam ² – & do not know exactly about the passage ³ – so I allow the full space of 4 days which I hope will be adequate to the undertaking –

Pray frank the enclosed

Emma ⁴ & Charlotte ⁵ are here so we are a good family party – the garden is in great beauty of anemones & Narcissus not much shew of anything else as winter has at last set in.

I shall bring you an Allium for your collection which we cannot name – & some Anemones which I take to be the Pavonina of Nice & its varieties.

Did you ever find Primula acaulis caulescens? I cut up a primrose the other day but could find no common stalk which is said to exist.

I hope M^r F. ⁶ is better as you have not mentioned him lately – you can write to me once here I think

Emma brought home some Cyclamens from the Lombard Lakes which must be I suppose C. Europæum.

There is great complaint here that Statice reticulata is disappearing from the coast – I have been looking for it to compare with a plant I have of a Statice from Berryhead, which can hardly be any other species, tho it seems different from the figure in Sowerby ⁷ which is from the Norfolk coast & in a marsh – & is different also from S. bellidifolia & spatulata both of which I have at Abb ⁸ – & also from cordifolia & the downy one which I remember in Italy. I should like to find a new Statice in England at any rate ours is a doubtful plant & I mean to send specimens to Naples or Sicily to compare with others from Malta which is the only certain habitat – & with which the Italian Botanists say none of those of their coasts perfectly agree –

Y^r Aff
W F S

Henry F. Talbot Esq MP ⁹
Lacock
Chippenham