'Brooklands'— Milton —
25/6/[19]09
To be written to after receipt of seeds
A. R. Wallace Esq F.R.S. &c &c
Dear Sir,
I wrote you by last mail in acknowledgment of your kind letter of 17th: April last and have now the pleasure to enclose a communication from Mr. Tannock1 (envelope included) by which you will see that he will send you seeds of Ranunculus Lyalli as soon as he can procure them.
I have recently had sent down to me from Dunedin Athenaeum a very interesting book of Nature Study entitled:- "Life and Sport in Hampshire". The author is a Mr. Geo[rge]: B. Dewar, an estate owner in the northern part of that county. The chapter on "The Flight of Birds" I thought [2] contained many original & striking remarks on that topic. The writer's style somewhat resembled that of the past-master of observation of out of door life in all departments the late Richard Jeffries2: what a piece of word-painting is his 'Pageant of Summer', summer in England which cannot be approached, take it[?] all in all, in any other part of the World. I have just been laying down a fairly extensive strawberry bed here, obtaining the plants Laxton's Noble' well-rooted from Dunedin at the rate of 5/- per hundred. You may remember the remark of the epicurean Dr. Boteler3 of the 18th: Cent[ur]y. a[?]t the strawberry that: — "Doubtless God might have made a better berry but doubtless He never did" — But isn't the Mangosteen the king of all fruits?
With kind regards | Yours very truly | W. E. Mc.Adam [signature]
Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP2953.2843)]
For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon
Please cite as “WCP2953,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 3 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP2953