209 



P.S. The news from Portugal are far from being 

 bad. Vest le meilleur des mondes possible, in Pan- 

 gloss's language. 



From the same. 



Dear Sir and Friend, London, July 4, 1795. 



Since you wish to have from me a long letter and 

 botanical news, I will readily comply with it, because 

 of all England you are the person with whom I like 

 the better to converse, and botany is now the purest 

 spring of pleasure to me. Your Kua^uor, is a pretty 

 name, and I find the ancient botanists very explicit 

 in its signification. They distinguish well enough 

 the Cyamus agyptius, which is the Nelumbo, from 

 the Cyamus hellenicus, which is the common bean. 



It seems that kvo/.ioc was to them a general name 

 of a class of resembling seeds, just as the word pois 

 in French, which is given to the Pisum Ochrus, to 

 the seed of the Cnestis, to the Cytisus Cajan, to the 

 seeds of Guilandina, &c. ; and the English word 

 bean, which is given not only to the Faba, but to 

 some Phaseoli, &c, only distinguishing them by 

 epithets, as the Cyams were. 



I wish to ascertain if the beans of the Mareotis 

 and of the Tritonia Palus, — to eat whose (which) was 

 a sin to the ^Egyptians, they being under the in- 

 fluence of Typhon, a cruel deity, — were the seeds of 

 the Nelumbo. 



But there is another reason why the word Kvapoc 

 is a happy one for the Tamara emblem of prolific 

 nature. Its original root ow is applied in some 



VOL. II. p 



