Letter from Jos. D. Hooker [Joseph Dalton Hooker] to George Maw
Information
Title
Letter from Jos. D. Hooker [Joseph Dalton Hooker] to George Maw
Record type
Archive
Original Reference
MAW/1/91
Date
14 Jul 1871
Scope & content
Written from Royal Gardens, Kew. Manuscript
He has not answered Maw’s kind letters due to being busy with official business; the arrival of the sedums and iris were godsends; the Iris is Iris filifolia Boiss., accurately drawn in Boissier’s [Pierre Edmond Boissier, botanist] ‘Flora’ and he has sent it to Fitch [Walter Hood Fitch, botanical artist] for the ‘Botanical Magazine’; Baker [John Gilbert Baker, botanist, keeper of the Kew Herbarium] has found a description of Iris fontanesia which suits the gorgeous species Hay [John Drummond Hay, British minister resident to Morocco] found; he has not investigated himself as he has not yet retrieved the dried specimens from the collections being ticketed in the herbarium; the Post Office opened the Iris box, took out the ticket and forwarded it to him in a letter charged at 2d, which he is shocked by; if he were not a government officer he would expose it in the ‘Times’, but ‘those who live in glass houses should not throw stones’; the present government are abominable, and he is soon to have an open reception with Ayrton [Acton Smee Ayrton, politician, first commissioner of works], whose insolence and underhand dealings will soon drive him to make a complaint to the Treasury; he will settle their finances when he has time; he encloses the corrected list of heights by Ball [John Ball, botanist], to be returned as he has no copy; he also encloses Baker’s notes on Maw’s sedums [enclosures not present]; he is sending a book by Rae [?Edward Rae] and hopes Maw will accept it; he asks for flowering specimens of anything that interests Maw as usual, as it is the nicest part of correspondence