Ohituat-y. ^ 637 



I have now the pleasure to add some extracts from letters from Mr. 

 Haworth to myself, respecting plants, which, I trust, will prove both 

 agreeable and useful to my brother gardeners, and neither derogatory to 

 the memory of Mr. Haworth, nor to my own reputation for the libertv I 

 take in thus publishing them. 



Accuracy in the application of the names of plants (and of all other 

 things) is ever most desirable, as by means of it ideas past, present, and 

 to come, can be definitely associated with the objects of them : not with- 

 out it. To apply the names of plants accurately, expensive facilities are 

 requisite, as numerous botanical books, and pictures, and specimens of 

 plants. Provincial botanic gardens can rarely afford to supply these. The 

 Bury St. Edmunds botanic garden could not. In this case my indulgent 

 employer, N. S. Hodson, Esq. A.L.S. Sec, superintendent of this garden, 

 favoured my soliciting Mr. Haworth to enter into correspondence with 

 me, for the purpose of authenticating the names of any species, of the 

 accuracy in the application of whose names I might feel any doubt. 

 I made, accordingly, the application to Mr. Haworth : this was done in 

 about May 31. 1828. He consented quickly: I shortly afterwards de- 

 spatched the first packet of specimens to him, and, on June 24. 1828, I 

 had the pleasure of receiving Mr. Haworth's first letter on technicalities. 

 From him I received, in all, nineteen ; and although these were professedly 

 on the technicalities of nomenclature, and so cannot be expected to be 

 very interesting to gardening readers generally, they yet contain, here and 

 there, notices and remarks which I conceive may be so. I present the 

 following extracts (Mr. Haworth had underlined the words which are 

 here given in italics) : — 



First technical Letter, received on June 24. 1828. — This consisted of 

 the names of those specimens which I had sent without names, correct 

 names for those which I had sent with erroneous names, references to the 

 books and authors with whose descriptions Mr. Haworth had compared 

 and identified the specimens I had sent, &c. In addition to all these 

 things was the following remark : — " Every fresh specimen is most welcome 

 to my large herbarium, which is probably about twenty-thousand species 

 strong ; and should you send me other parcels, I shall always be thankful 

 for any new or rare things added, with the hope of their being useful 

 to my herbarium, and so shall I feel rewarded for the trouble of exa- 

 mination." 



Second Letter, July 17. 1828. — A long one, replete with scientific 

 information. 



Third Letter, received July 2. 1828. — It contained, besides technical 

 information, most excellent advice, in reply to a request for it, on the 

 arrangement of, and points of information to be embraced within, a second 

 edition of the catalogue of the plants in the Bury garden, which Mr. 

 Hodson then contemplated publishing : it has not, however, yet been 

 published. The following incidental remark occurred in this letter : — 

 " James Don, of the Cambridge Botanic Garden, was my old friend, 

 whom I visited almost annually up to his death : he had very few plants 

 he did not spare me a specimen of; I have very many wild ones, and I 

 have gathered still more in the London gardens, although of late years far 

 fewer than before. Hence your offer of sending me specimens of the 

 newly introduced species is very acceptable" 



Fourth Letter, received August .3. 1828. — " I have the honour of cor- 

 responding with the Prince de Salm Dyck, at Dyck, in Prussia." [See 



Gardener's Magazine^ Vol. IX. p. 460.] " The Revisiones 



Plantarum Succidentarum do not contain all the plants of my other works, 

 but chiefly new species, or improved locations, or accounts of old ones." 

 " After this follows, in your letter, Mr. Hodson's kind 



