WCP5609

[1]

Hurstpierpoint, Sussex

June 4. 1865.¹

My dear Hanbury,

I have not written to return the Label & to thank you for your letter because I have been, after my too frequent custom, crankly² — as we say in the north³ (kranklich?) [German: sickly]

I can suggest no improvement in the Label except, perhaps, that the first letters in LICHENES, AMAZONICI, and ANDINI, should not be taller than the rest; but this I leave to your more cultivated taste.

I have had little to do with printers, and the only one I have known who was fully alive to the aesthetics of printing, & who took care that everything that went from his press should at least look symmetrical, was Newman.⁴ He printed⁵ the Labels of my Pyrenean Mosses,⁶ but I found him very dear.

The most celebrated collection of Lichens ever published is Pastor Schaerer's⁷ of those of the Swiss Alps,⁸ and his Labels are headed Schaerer — Lichenes Helvetici. Leighton⁹ suggested for mine Spruce — Lich[enes]. Brasil. Exsicc[ati]., which would only tend to increase the muddle into which S. American [2] Botanical Geography has been thrown by people who write on that subject without troubling themselves to study Common Geography.

I must now trust to you to have the Labels printed & dispatched as speedily as possible.

Many thanks for the Extr[actum]. Carnis¹⁰ which reached me safely.

Wallace's book¹¹ is wonderfully truthful, but he lacks Bates's¹² condensed vivid style. In speaking of natural objects in a book of travels, I think it best to give always a short plain description of them. This was the practice of delightful old Dampier,¹³ & his descriptions are nearly all recognisable. Many of the plants alluded to by Wallace had no ^scientific names then, & even if they had had, the mere mention of a name affords no information.

I believe the root of every species of Smilax is "Sarsaparilla", but only the multicaul¹⁴ species have such a quantity of roots as to be worth the trouble of grubbing them up.

The great mass of the Tonga beans¹⁵ collected on the Rio Negro are the produce of Dipteryx rosea Spruce, whose fallen pods strew the rocks at the falls of Saõ Gabriel¹⁶ in the season. [3] Andiroba is Carapa guianensis, a lofty tree, frequent in the Amazon Valley.

Wallace is a poor linguist, & makes frequent mistakes in his Portuguese, especially in the genders; hence I do not wonder at his Nectandrum¹⁷, which, however does not "shock" me, per se, any more than Coriandrum does. If you cannot tolerate a neuter noun αϒηζ[?] how can you the feminine ones — Nectandra Dimorphandra, &c. &c.

I am going to give you a problem — you say "^{the origin of} Guaraná is well known "— well: I say it is from Paullinia Cupana Humb[oldt]., as I made out, very satisfactorily to myself, Paullinia sorbili[s] Martii nonobstante.

Will you have the goodness to buy for me Humboldt's¹⁸ treatise "De distributione geographica plantarum" [Latin: About the geographical distribution of plants] — French or Latin — but take care it has the map?

In haste | Yours ever | Richard Spruce. [signature]