
          16 July 1832
 Arlary (by Kinross- Scotland)
 (where I now reside, having quitted
 Edinburgh)


 G. Walker Arnott


 My dear Sir,


 It is now some little time since I received
 your letter, and also the packet of plants which soon after
 accompanied it neither the one nor the other however arrived
 till 20 or [crossed out: more] [added: twenty-one] months after the date (6th April 1830). I 
 trust that this will be sufficient apology for my apparent
 long neglect.


 My trip to Russia was at [added: an] unfavourable time
 of the year, between then summer and winter, when 
 the weather is execrable unfit for the life of man, beast,
 or plant, endurable in the open air by the only remaining
 class of the natural Kingdom- videlicet- minerals.


 I left this about the end of August, spent three weeks
 on the duck-pond, and was home by the beginning
 of November. So I had no time nor opportunity for botanizing
 [added: in Russia] indeed all vegetation had ceased. I therefore
 proceeded no farther than S. Petersburgh and my time
 there would have been most unprofitably spent, had
 I not become acquainted with Dr. [Friedrich Ernst Ludwig] Fischer of the Imperial
 Gardens, and Mr. [John] Prescott who though a merchant is one of 
 the most ardent botanists there and has the finest collection
 of the plants of Astrachan [Astrakhan] and part of the Altai-range
 that I saw. These two respectively devoted a part of a day
 twice every week to me, and I received from their 
 duplicates much that I had not before. I could
        