WCP3920

[1]¹

Hurstpierpoint

10^th Aug^t. 1868.

My dear Spruce,

I have been going to write to you every day for some time, but every day has brought its own work. I lost my mother on the 22^nd of July, her age was 82. So that although always complaining of indisposition she did complete the time that seems to be the span of an ordinary long life.

Wallace, on his return from Helvetia at the end of June, brought a lot of Alpine plants such as Primula auricula and P. farinosa, Soldanella, Dryas, Thalictrum, Aquiligia [Aquilegia], Gentiana four[?] sp. Saxifraga 2. sp.² but not any mosses except two or three bits plucked off the calcareous rocks at Nieufchatel [sic] [Neuchâtel]; these were Neckera crispa in fruit with Hyp[num] molluscum and [2] fragments of that Hyp[num]. which you got in the Pyrenees and which was then known as H. vaucheri [.] Beside these was a tuft of Bryum capillare and this was I think the whole collection, I do not think they did so much as they had hoped for. Wallace could not dry the plants so well as he expected and Annie³ could not get up the mountains without bringing on nausea [,] which she lost as soon as she got down again. Most of the flowering plants I have named I have still alive, but it has been very bad weather; the air is so dry that I have been obliged to water them every time I go home or they would begin to shrivel up. Davies⁴ started a week after Wallace had returned and went to Fermat and from his description he has done a great amount of country, but gone too fast and too far to investigate the mosses. I think although I forbore to say so to him that he had but a shabby [3] lot of specimens [;] he found plenty of your Hypn. pyrenaicum in about the same state as you gathered it [.] he [sic] had also Hyp. Halleri in very good state but the only thing which to me was of much interest was a Philonotis in good fruit which I called in the Indian Mosses P. seriata⁵ [;] it got into the wrong place among the Indian mosses where it was only intended to be mentioned as a British species allied to the oriental P. turneriana which has also seriate leaves [.] A state[?] of P. seriata[?] with innovations such as are produced on mosses by being shut up in a tin box for a short time was sent out by Schleicher⁶ as Bryum lycopodiiforme [.] His Philonotis is close to P. fontana in size and habit, [sic] Davies had also a few Grimmiae [Grimmiaceae],⁷ none in good state; Jungerm[annia] barbata and J. albescens but [4] hardly any other Hepat[icae]⁸ intermixed with his mosses [;] indeed he said he could find none. From the observations he made I suppose that Davies' companion who picked some flowering plants was continuously urging him along and would not let him stay to hunt the more promising places — I forgot one moss that D. found in fruit, it is that Mnium which you gathered in Yorkshire and I down here on the banks of streams, and which is I believe figured or rather intended to be figured in Bryol. Europ.⁹ as M. lycopodioides. I think the figure is partly from Indian specimens, D. got this by a stream and suspected it might be the same as he had seen in similar situation here.

I sent by Book Post your two books of localities with which I think I have quite done.

All my family are well in which state I hope this will find you.

Ever yours | W^m. Mitten [signature]