From R. K. Greville   7 July 1828

Edinburgh

7 July 1828

My dear Friend,

It is now I find a long time since I received your letter (of the 25. April) but I have been moving about so much that my correspondence at home & abroad is in a sad condition.– My two portfolios containing unanswered british & foreign letters are “big-bellied” and I must be relieved of twins or triplets for many days before I can be out of my pain.

In regard to Mougeot. be so good as to send me a copy of your transactions and if there is any balance in my favor let it lie till I send you more of Mougeot. The transactions may be sent with the packet of plants you have been good enough to lay by for me, to the care of Messirs Baldwin Craddock & Jay Pater Noster Row London – to be sent in their Scotch Bookseller’s parcel.

I am happy to say my health is much better. I can even walk for 2-3 hours without fatigue. I am obliged however to be very careful & consequently to lose a great deal of time – at least so I think. Botany flourishes all over the world. I have just got a letter from an old acquaintance – a botanist who is elected Professor of Nat. Hist y in the University of Quito! Graham’s class here is larger than ever was known. The same of Glasgow. I suppose there will be a Garden in King’s College London (!!!) because the other one there has none so much the better. I may have another chance for Glasgow (every one thinks of himself in these glorious times of opposition).

At this moment I am busy in getting up the last 3 nos. of my A. Flora & writing the synopsis which I began in Devonshire. My booksellers here have finally undertaken my British Algae. I wish Algologia had been legitimate. I can find no word so good.

I have just got a few more Algae from New Holland of which I shall send you duplicates. Alman has previously disappointed me who promised to do wonders there– He had a ream of paper &c from me – & he now comes back and says he was on the wrong side of the island for good plants– only think– the wrong side of New Holland! I expect some good things from the provinces of Esmeraldas S. America as I hear two parcels are already sent off. It is a country that has hardly been examined. I have a man procuring largely in Dominica – but I have been unlucky lately – one man gets married – another fights a duel & a third gets on the wrong side of the country & a fourth gets yellow fever.

We beg our united kind regards to Mrs Henslow & I beg you to believe me

My dear friend | very faithfully yours | R. K. Greville

P.S. I have had a magnificent present made me lately – a papier rubric copy of the esoteric “voyage” by Humboldt. It is on its way from Paris. It will serve me to bind it.

Please cite as “HENSLOW-75,” in Ɛpsilon: The Correspondence of John Stevens Henslow accessed on 29 March 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/henslow/letters/letters_75