1773 BANKS AND LIGHTFOOT 229 



From Mr. Skinner* 



Purley, Berks, Oct. 17, 1773. 



Dear Sir, — I am extremely obliged to you for the favour 

 of your two last letters; one of which I found upon my 

 arrival at this place some time after the date; the other, 

 after various peregrinations, got at length to Oxford a 

 second time, from whence I have lately received it. I 

 return my sincerest thanks for the very friendly invitation 

 they give me to Selborne ; which, from the former specimens 

 I have received there of your obliging hospitality, I could 

 heartily wish to accept. But having been detained much 

 longer in Brecknock-shire than I intended, I am now under 

 a necessity of returning to Oxford in a day or two. How- 

 ever, I flatter myself with the pleasure of seeing you at 

 Selborne some time in the next summer. . . . 



In July last I spent an evening with Mr. Banks and 

 Mr. Lightfootf at Brecknock. They had been botanizing 

 from Bristol through the counties of Glamorgan, Carmarthen, 

 and Pembroke ; and had been very successful. In the 

 environs of St. Vincent's Eock only (visited by every 

 botanist) they found three new British plants (one of them 

 the Arbutus uva-ursi), and afterwards several others that 

 were either new or very dubious, as not having been found 

 by the botanists of the present age. Among the former, 

 Sison mrticillatumy a common plant in the meadows of 

 Carmarthenshire ; among the latter, Cheiranthus sinuatus, 

 Adiantum capillus- Veneris, and a species of Festvxa unknown 



* Fellowof C.C.C, Oxford. 



t John Lightfoot, born 1735, entered Pembroke College, Oxon., 1753; 

 B.A. 1756; M.A. 1766; librarian and chaplain to the Duchess of Portland; 

 curate of Colnbrook, near Uxbridge ; 1772 travelled in Scotland with Pennant, 

 and at his expense published the 'Flora Scotica' in 1778; catalogued the 

 Portland collection on the Duchess's death in 1788, and soon after died him- 

 self, at Uxbridge. His herbarium, bought by King George III., is now at 

 Kew. He discovered the reed-wren, and described it in ' Philos. Trans.,' 

 1785. F.R.S. 1781, and an original F.L.S. His MS. journal of his excursion 

 in Wales is in the Botanical Department of the British Museum — A. N. 



