
          really & truly all over the world, that I have
only to say what everyone else interested in the
progress of horticulture & botany can say. They
have been the means in the last fifteen years of
introducing more new valuable plants to our
gardens than were imported during the preceding
century, and, in the character of domestic greenhouses, 
if I may so speak, i.e. as a mean of cultivating
plants with success in our parlours, our halls & our
drawing rooms, they have constituted a new era in
horticulture. I shall never forget the expression
made use of by the late Mr. [George] Loddiges to me one day
when speaking of your cases ‘Whereas I used formerly 
to lose 19 out of 20 of the plants I imported
during the voyage, 19 out of 20 is now the average
of those that survive. Believe me
my dear Mr. Ward 
most faithfully yours
W. J. Hooker

[in pencil: To Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward (1791-1868)]
        