TALBOT8692

My dear Henry

I suppose you are coming to town again this week en route for the Pic du Midi. Can you bring up for me if not large the plant of Tacsonia manicata you said was struck for me ¹ & some other plant you recommended which you had raised from seed – Akebia – or Cantua – or some such name I think.

I found just now a number of your old botanical letters from Varese they are curious to look over & make one long for for [sic] many impossibilities.

Do you go on with Philology? I have just been reading in the little book of Montenegro ² published by Chapman & Hall that the Bulgarian Slavonic suffixes the article which it alone possesses among its congeners, like the Scandinavian Gothic – one can only conclude that it is a trait of the previous occupiers the Mœsogoths whose dialect was more Swedish than German. I believe the only word in common between Slavonic & Celtic is Med or Mead – which seems to have been an old drink.

I have got a quantity of cones of Banksias fine specimens to show you when you return – & a number of printed labels for a Herbarium arranged after the natural orders which might suit you & I do not want.

I hope Ela ³ is better – does Charley ⁴ take to natural studies?

I received some more flowers on Friday which would have pleased you – Magnolia Gulau[?], Rhod. rubro-nanum, Narcissus trilobus & stellaris & tripodalis T. ⁵ oculus Solis vera from Agen, Scilla amœna & italica (never found in Italy as far as I know) Forsythia, & lots of Muscaris – I wish you would try to make a peat rockwork exclusively for alpine plants. The weather is wretched we shall have no summer till after the solstice

Y^r aff
W F S

31 B. St ⁶
23 April

Do not forget to sow the Beschorneria ⁷ –

[envelope:]
Henry F. Talbot Esq^e
Lacock Abbey
Chippenham