118 



Lieutenant- Colonel Hardwicke to J. E. Smith. 



My dear Sir, Calcutta, Nov. 4, 1807. 



I was a few days since highly gratified by the 

 receipt of your friendly letter of the 12th of last 

 April. It is a pleasure I had hardly promised 

 myself; and I will assure you if my writing now and 

 then will induce you to spare me sometimes a lei- 

 sure hour, to keep up the correspondence thus be- 

 gun, I shall on my part often give you a letter, 



high among those who, by encountering personal difficulties and 

 hardships with the most indefatigable and disinterested zeal, have 

 promoted botanical knowledge, — was born at Aberdeen in Au- 

 gust 1741. 



"The writer of this," he continues, "well recollects the plea- 

 sure which the novel sight of an African Geranium in Yorkshire 

 and Norfolk gave him about forty years ago. Now, evei - y gar- 

 ret and cottage window is filled with numerous species of that 

 beautiful tribe, and every green-house glows with the innumerable 

 bulbous plants and splendid Heaths of the Cape. For all these 

 we are principally indebted to Mr. Masson ; besides a multi- 

 tude of rarities, more difficult of preservation or propagation, 

 confined to the more curious collections. 



" During his stay at the Cape, he entered into correspondence 

 with the great Linnaeus. Having discovered a bulbous plant of 

 a new genus, he was not only laudably ambitious of botanical 

 commemoration in its name, but he was particularly anxious to 

 receive this honour from no less a hand than that of his illus- 

 trious and venerable correspondent. This indeed was the ' uni- 

 cum prcemium,' the only reward to which he aspired for all his 

 labours. He obtained the honour to which he aspired. The 

 specimen of Massonia in the herbarium of Linnaeus, named by 

 his own trembling hand, near the close of his life, proves that 

 the name had his sanction." — Rees's Cyclopaedia. 



