WCP3852

Letter (WCP3852.3771)

[1]

Old Orchard,

Broadstone,

Wimborne.

April 16th. 19091

L[ieutenan]t. Col[one]l. Prain2 F.R.S.

Dear Sir

I was going to throw the enclosed Mss. into the W[aste].P[aper]. basket when it occurred to me that it might perhaps be worth printing in the "Journal of Botany"3 at any time when matter appears to be short.

I had intended it for a short Chapter in Spruces "Notes" but decided it was too fragmentary and too exclusively [2] botanical to be included. The names of the Nat[ural]. Orders after the name of a genus or species were interpolated by myself, as I thought even botanists might not always remember the names of the rarer S. American genera.

The whole matter, & much more is of course in the "Journals" you have, but this fragment may be of use as a sample.

Yours very truly | Alfred R. Wallace [signature] [3]

Thanked, & promised early publication. 17.1V.09.4

1
A circular date stamp, "Royal Gardens Kew 17 Apr. 1909" partly covers "Wimborne" in the address
2
Prain, Sir David (1857-1944). Scottish physician and botanist, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (1905-1922).
3
Spruce, Richard. (1909). The vegetation of the Pastasa and Bombonasa Rivers. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information. 1909, No. 5, article XXVII, pp. 216-223. (Not the Journal of Botany as suggested by Wallace. The article begins "The following notes by Richard Spruce...have been sent to the Director by Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace.")
4
"Thanked...09." is written in an unknown hand, apparently on the back of the second page of the letter, which also bears the stamped number "1617" and the handwritten number "273".

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP3852.3771)]

For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon

Revision history

Transcribed by Lucas, Paula [2014-03-21]

Please cite as “WCP3852,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 3 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP3852