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incessantly furnishes us, and with which no other family, nor 

 person in this Island, has yet, been supplied. For the last 

 twelve years, we have been indebted to your liberality for an 

 exact knowledge of the progress of the human mind ; not 

 only in science and the arts, but in moral and religious 

 feeling: and the light you have communicated, we have 

 endeavoured to diffuse in our little sphere. The extensive 

 influence of good deeds cannot be estimated. In sendinff 

 me your fine plants, and fruit-trees, and flowers, you did 

 not contemplate the blessings you were then communicating 

 to the great Island of Madagascar ; where your apples, 

 peai's, and plums, are now in great abundance in the markets 

 of the capital, and add to the subsistence, as well as the 

 luxuries of a numerous people, and to the countless genera- 

 tions which will succeed them. In our little Island, too, it 

 is to you we owe the origin of that taste for the cultivation of 

 natural science, which, by its difiiision among the higher 

 classes, has enabled us to establish Professorships of Natural 

 Philosophy and Botany, and to form a Society of Natural 

 History, that may, before long, contribute, in some degree, 

 to extend the bounds of that science. You have thus been 

 the cause of a great mass of human happiness. To me, our 

 correspondence has proved a source of unmixed pleasure 

 and satisfaction, and I return to it with joy, from the turmoil 

 of polemical discussion, from which even my obscurity could 

 not shelter me, with the passionate zealots of the day. I 

 send you, by the Georgiana, in charge of Dr. Wilson of the 

 Navy, a new Testament and Catechism in the Madagese 

 language, printed at the capital of that great Island a few 

 months ago, and which has just arrived. The articles of 

 Natural Flistory are embarked on board the Lady Flora, 

 Capt. Fayrer, who sails in a few days. He is a member 

 of the Zoological Society, and a very zealous Naturalist, 

 and will take the greatest care of them. I promised him an 

 introduction to you, which I shall give him before parting. 

 I think you will find the Porcupine a great beauty ; it has 

 grown very rapidly with me, and I never saw one so large 

 or so brilliantly decorated before. The Wombat is still 



