
          Recd [Received] March 23rd
And [Answered] April 5th

Middletown Connecticut
March 20th 1841

My Dear Friend

I had the pleasure of seeing your well
known hand again in your letter of the 10th, and am glad
to find you are still blessed with health, and able to sustain 
so much excitement, and hard labour, and further that
you are able to render yourself so emminently [eminently] serviceable
to the cause of science &c

Of late I have written an unusual number of long letters,
to correspondents, and have now I hope nearly got through
my arrangements for the exchange of plants, &c
I had the high satisfaction of receiving 2 letters from
Revd Mr [Moses Ashley] Curtis, dated at Washington N.C. [North Carolina]. He is to furnish
me in the course of next season, a number of plants, and
has sent me a long list of Desiderata.

I have just written a long letter to Mr Artemas Bigelow, now
near Mobile, who will visit Florida, this season, and I 
have sent him an outline drawing of Torreya taxifolia
and desired him to collect many specimens of foliage
fruit and bark. If he goes to Florida he will be in the 
region (of the growth) of this rare production of the forest.
I also last fall desired a Mr Hall of this city, now in
the same region to collect this rarity for me in
abundance. If I succeed I will be ready to exchange 
this rarity with you, for other things unless you have it in profusion
I find I have 8 entire specimens of Halenia, 12 a 14 inches
long, with about 6 pair of leaves. These are laid with
things ready for you.

I wish to procure Primula farinosa β america.
Cypripedium arietinum, & Nardosmia palmata, when
these come in your way. I beg to have them laid aside
for me. If I am not asking too much. I want them [added: indeed] now
to copy for figure to send round to some of my pupils and
then I hope to secure specimens of these rare plants.
If I had them now, I should send outline drawings to several friends
in Vermont &c. I have  written about them to Dr Houghton, and also 
to Mr I.A. [Increase Allen] Laphamt of Milwaukee who sent me his catalog tho not in it

[in right margin]
but I desired him to look for it.
        