WCP3922

[1]

Hurstpierpoint

21 Jany 1870

My dear Spruce,

The enclosed letter arrived this morning, I therefore make it a peg to hang a yarn of my own upon, although I have no sensational matter to tell you.

My wife¹ when in London some six weeks ago learnt from Wallace[,] who had met with some body who had heard of you[,] and I was sorry to learn from what she heard that you had rather retrogressed in health, however, I hope you are better than when you left here.

All my party are pretty well. Rose² not quite so well as I could wish, the rest as well as the Wallaces³ very well[,] myself very well suffering nothing worse than the annual attack of Bill-ious fever, the cure for which is however progressing favourably — Mrs Davey⁴ told me the other day that her daughter Sally⁵ was getting worse and she hardly expects her to last very long, that bad cough being [2] more and more troublesome.

Nothing startling has occurred among the mosses lately — Davies⁶ came home from the Australian Tyrol with a few specimens, one a new Tortula — Barbula distinct from any other European species, but without capsules although with setae, he went to the station for Plagiothecium neckeroideum and gathered what he thought was it, but I hardly think it can be the moss meant by Schimper⁷ for it is monoieous and wants the flagellacious[?] habit. Davies called on Sauter⁸ an old gentleman with one eye, and he undertook to send Davies a set of all the rarities gathered by him, for which he (Davies) there and then paid, and paid an enhanced price that Sauter should send him large specimens. I am rather tickled with this transaction for Davies takes credit for and does fairly deserve the character of being a good bargainer, and the said set was to [3] have sufficed for himself and another who was to have found the bulk of the money. Sauter assured Davies that it would take some time, not less than six weeks to prepare the mosses, and Davies told me that knowing as he did that philosophers always were slow, he was willing to wait as the specimens would grow larger. I have just learnt from a friend that the packet duly arrived and Davies is chagrined to find the specimens are absolutely indivisible not withstanding his extra — honorarium, but the packet contained a beautiful photograph of Dr Sauter. Davies was to have given me a sight of the specimens, but as yet I have not seen them. I suspect he expects chaff will be blown about if he comes this way.

I read your paper on grass flowers, in two places⁹, and I think as you do that the anthers and stigmas are not thrust out to get them out of the way as old Forsyth¹⁰ wrote some time ago in the Gardener's [4] Chronicle¹¹ (I think it was). He said that when the anthers of wheat were protruded and people thought wheat was in bloom, ^it was a mistaken notion, for the fact was that the flowering was over and the anthers were used up and extruded, these matters however are written upon sometimes just when one cannot go and pluck a specimen and see how the truth stands by direct experiments.

I have a lot of mosses waiting for my first leisure which will not come for a few days[.]

Ever truly Yours

William Mitten [signature]