TALBOT8191

Oakfield, Keswick
Sept. 8

My Dear W^m

I dont know whether you have left Carclew ¹, so I direct there, but I believe Constance ² has written to L^y Ilchester ³ at Melbury ⁴ in reply to her kind letter. As I heard nothing of you in the Pyrenees I am quite uncertain whether you went there or not. Pray write me a line and tell me, directing to Lacock, for I mean to return to the Abbey almost immediately – I spent a fortnight in Spain where I was unfortunately taken ill owing to the combined effects of the heat of the weather and the very execrable Spanish cookery – I would advise a stranger to touch nothing but bread and water and fruit and then if he is a strong person, he may traverse the country with impunity. The scenery was rather different from what I expected – Guipuzcoa is a province full of high mountains, very slow and wearisome to surmount, but pleasant to look at, being clothed from top to bottom with chesnut forests and fern. Not a bit like Switzerland, to which the guidebook compares it for it wants lakes and the few rivers are sluggish and muddy – I never saw any country so destitute of flowers, I found however by the roadsides an abundance of Irish heath (Menziesia Dabeoci –) which I never saw wild before, and quantities of a showy Cytisus which I never saw before, with a glandular hairy inflorescence⁵ – It would be very much worth cultivation. But the prettiest wild flower was a Lithospermum, of the same tribe with purpuro-cæruleum – I take it to be prostratum, do you know that? and is it likely to be found by roadsides in Biscay? In the Pyrenees the season for flowers was over, except perhaps on the summits, but these I had not strength to climb. I limited myself to quiet drives in fertile valleys. But that you know does not much tend to fill the botanists herbarium In some places there was a pretty turf composed of 3 English flowers (all of them Dorset ones) but improved in size by the Southern climate, viz.

Pinguicula Lusitanica
Campanula hederacea
Anagallis tenella

all bog plants –

The Pic of Lhieris where I botanized formerly looked very grand and imposing, but I was not tempted to escalade it on the present occasion.

I saw the eclipse very well at Vittoria – there was not a cloud in the sky to interfere with the phenomena. I am going to write an account of my observations for the Transactions of the Astronomical Society.⁶

With my love to Lady Ilchester believe me yours ever truly
H. F. Talbot

Write soon.

If you are still at Carclew ask Sir Charles ⁷ if he would like me to pay him a visit for a day or two in the course of September

I got no Lilio-hyacinthus