TALBOT702

Penrice ¹
June 23^d –

My dear Henry,

I am very glad our correspondance [sic] has begun again as it had stopped for so long but I hope now we shall have frequent communications of our thoughts & discoveries. Since I wrote last I had the good fortune to find Polystichum alpinum, on the top of the Cairne on Cyfn Bryn & likewise either Sedum dasyphyllus or anglica album a beautiful little thing. I have been employed in Engraving on Stone since I came home I don’t know whether you have seen any, I will send you two of my performances – I think it is a delightful discovery because the Etching on Copper was so very tedious, & besides being obliged to have a separate Plate for different subjects, (which was expensive) it was liable to so many misfortunes – Now one stone serves for my life I have nothing to do but take as many impressions as I like & clean the Stone ready for any thing else I please. I have drawn six of the Phascums you sent me – & Etched the four I send – I magnified them with the 2^d mag^r & I hope you will find them correct. I have the intention to magnify all I possess that are in a good state for shewing the character of the Moss. The worst is I hurt my eyes so terribly by straining them thro’ the Microscope that I am afraid of doing them some injury. Pray send me some of the Mosses you made out at Sowerby’s, never mind a double letter for once.

Monday

I have just received your letter ² from Castleford, I have not words to express my envy of your acquaintance with M^r Hooker ³ – Whenever any of those clever people will be a little communicative I feel particularly obliged to them – I always thought the distinction between Bryum [bimum?], ventricosum, & turbinatum, was so slight as hardly to constitute a separate genus species – I will send you what I found & think to be ventricosum & turbinatum. If M^r H. thinks the leaves will be sufficient to distinguish Mosses, I wonder how he will make out B. turbinatum & ve[nt^m?] to be the same, for the leaves are totally [illegible deletion] different – Pray tell me which of Smiths ⁴ Phascum’s he thinks varieties. Those you gave me are certainly mixed but have [sic] not separated them – & till I have your opinion I will leave them alone – I never saw your H. piliferum. I wish you had had all my Lichens at Sowerby’s ⁵ to make out I have no book nor nothing to make them out by I intend saving my money till I can buy Hooker’s Jungermanniæ or M^r Dillwyn’s ⁶ Confervæ – which shall it be? but I have not got the money yet. I saw M^r Brown ⁷ when I was at Sir Joseph’s ⁸ but altho’ I talked to him I cannot say I got acquainted with him he is not at all communicative did you see his New Holland Work? it is exquisite – I was never more perplexed in my life than I was there by not knowing what to look at, every work was so splendid D^r Holland ⁹ who wrote travells [sic] with in Albania was there I afterwards got very well acquainted with him in one evening at Lansdowne House. ¹⁰ He sent Mary ¹¹ some stones a piece of Marble of which the Parthenon is built, a piece of Granite or Serpentine from the top of M^t Pindus & some of the deposits of the boiling springs in Iceland – & several other Icelandic specimens

Yours truly
Jane

Who went with you to Sir J. Banks’s?

W^m Henry Fox Talbot Esq^re
Rev^d M^r Barnes’s ¹²
Castleford
Ferrybridge