267 



The operation on one eye did not exceed two mi- 

 nutes, nor more than three minutes in the other ; 

 and I am happy to tell you that the operation has 

 succeeded so well, that, with the help of spectacles, 

 she thinks she sees as well as ever she did in her life ; 

 she never suffered live minutes pain after the opera- 

 tion : — but how fortunate has Lady Cullum been! She 

 was couched on Monday morning the 19th of June, 

 and on Saturday the 24th the intense heat came on : 

 had this intense heat come on the first or second 

 day after the operation, the loss of her eyes would 

 probably have been the consequence. The operators 

 do not regard the advanced age of their patients, 

 nor the season of the year, except in extreme hot 

 weather. If I was forty or fifty years younger than 

 I am, I should never forget the 19th of June, it 

 being the day on which Lady Cullum underwent 

 the operation, and the day of the death of Sir Jo- 

 seph Banks ; and the last time I saw him he parti- 

 cularly inquired how she did. I saw Sir Joseph at 

 his Sunday's levee about three weeks before ; and I 

 said to several friends I should never see him more ! 

 I have been over most of the places you mention 

 in your Tour, particularly Haddon and Bakewell. 



In my last I mentioned to you a Diant/ius, the 

 seed of which was collected on the ruins of Catul- 

 lus's villa at Sermione, on the Lago di Garda in 

 Italy : it grows upwards of three feet high, with a 

 profusion of blossoms. I take it to be the Dian- 

 thus virgineus. There is a figure of it in Bot. Mag. 

 tab. 1740. In one of the plants, most of the flowers 

 have only four petals : in some flowers the stamina 



