WCP4720

[1]

Broadstone, Wimborne

April 8th. 1906

Dear Mr. Slater

Thanks for sending one Spruce's¹ Journal apparently (so far), intended for the press. I think I had it once before, from him, but had no time & not much inclination, then, to read it. Now I have begun to read it, & find it full of interest, but it is too small a portion of his whole journey (besides being the best known part of it) to be likely to get a publisher. now. I gather from your letter that you have not yet fully examined & sorted out all Spruce's papers. From letters I have of his, & several [2] of which I have printed in "My Life", I feel sure he must have kept some kind of "journal" throughout his travels & also copious notes on the various botanical ^{& other} questions & facts that from time to time interested him. I have the French "Precis d'un Voyage &c." from him, and have just been translating the greater part of it for a young friend now in Trinidad, but who thinks of going up the Amazon into Spruce's Country — it is most interesting. — but very brief.

My idea is, that from his notes & journals & from the letters to the Journal of Botany ^&c. a book might be made up of considerable [3] interest to Botanists & also to naturalists of every class, and even to all educated persons with scientific tastes. I presume he must have, at least one complete set of all the letters &c. he sent to the J. of Botany, or other periodicals, & probably copies of private letters to Sir William Hooker² and to Mr. Bentham.³ If you can, first, send me a list of all the papers &c. of the above character, that you have, I shall be able to judge whether it is worth while to apply to Sir J. Hooker⁴ or others for advice or information. But please do [4] not send them to be ^me till I know approximate what they are, as I am so crowded up with my own ^mss. papers & letters that I really have no room to deal with a large mass of unsorted papers, large parts of which may be relating to business or of no interest. It is his voyages to the Orinoko & the Andes that have the greatest novelty & interest, & of the former I know nothing, except what he told me himself or mentioned in private letters, but it was full of interest.

Prof. Poulton of Oxford⁵ is now preparing for publication the Journals of Burchell⁶ the great traveller & naturalist of the beginning of the last century, — & I expects Spruce's "Journals" will be quite as interesting.

Yours very truly | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]