
          Recd. Nov. 6th

Cambridge
4 Oct. 1838

Dear Sir
I feel deeply the privilege I enjoy in this
addressing you. The encouragement you [added: have] so kindly extended, has been
the source of many an hour of pleasure - as I contemplated
to the possibility of discoveries - which would be no longer doomed 
to the forgetfulness of some rubbish-corner in the Herbarium. And this
hope has led me to write what I fear will be a tedious letter. 
So little (comparatively) has been published of the stations of American
plants - that students often discover what the negative evidence of 
our books would make to appear rare - [crossed out: but] which in fact the
MSS of botanists + the great Herbariums of the Country are both supplied
with the unprinted facts. I will mention several plants of interest - 
in regard to which I know only that they are in my books. A plant
is naturalied (recently) in Cambridge - which seems, though it was sent
me in a [added: badly] dried state so that I could not examine the organs - to be the 
Lysimachia nummularia of Europe - + the comparison which I have just
made of it with a Swiss specimen of the L. nummularia leads me to think
it mest be that plant - though i could not dissect the flowers of
either with entire satisfaction. The L. nummularia has never been cultivated
here to my knowledge - certainly not in our Botanical garden - + it is
a plant which would hardly be cult. elsewhere. It is procumbent - or
creeping I am not sure which - but this is hardly of consequence to you.

        