HISTORIC WEDGWOOD MEDALLIONS 437 



brothers had ever heard of it and were all most anxious to 

 obtain it, search was made for the mould, and a rubbing sent 

 * of an old gentleman as like Herschel as me.' The mould 

 was identified finally from Hooker's own medallion, which 

 had been made for the 1851 Exhibition, and turned out to be 

 a fine piece of Flaxman's work. 



Similarly he suggested that the Wedgwoods should supply 

 the Linnaean Jubilee at Upsala in 1907 with the Linnaeus 

 medallion, with the result that 'the firm joyfully respond, 

 and will also send Capt. Cook, Banks, Solander, Bergman, 

 Queen Christina, Charles XII, and Gustavus III.' To complete 

 the matter, he wrote to his correspondent, the Professor of 

 Botany at Stockholm (Professor Wittrock), 



asking him if he could introduce at the Jubilee the subject 

 of the Linnaeus Medallion portrait being the work of the 

 famous Swedish sculptor Inlander ; and that Dr. Solander, 

 a pupil of Linnaeus (afterwards Banks's Librarian), declared 

 it by far the best likeness of his old master. Also if he could 

 recommend for the Etruria Firm a good agent for the disposal 

 of the medallions, the firm having no correspondent in 

 Sweden. (To W. E. D., January 1, 1907.) 



The memories of old times, often curiously re-echoed in 

 the present, are often warmly renewed in the letters to his 

 remaining contemporaries, Mrs. Lyell, whom he had early 

 known as Katherine Horner, and Mrs. Paisley, who, as Sabina 

 Smith of Jordan Hill, had been his playmate in childhood. 



To Mrs. Paisley 



February 4, 1899. 



MY DEAR SABINA, Your kind letter of the 15th gave 

 me very great pleasure. You are now the oldest of all rny 

 friends ! the only one antedating 1830, so that when my 

 mind wanders back and back, ever so far, your name comes 

 as the first and last in the long list of old companions, and 

 always with unclouded associations. 



Do you remember our ' black-bide ' [i.e. blackberry] 

 hunts in the hills above Helensburgh, our games in the con- 

 servatory at the Baths where Bell's steam-engine lay ? the 

 Amethyst ? the dogs, Copper and Combie ? and the wonderful 



