Hunt Institute Archives Text Discovery Platform

Page transcription

St Louis University December the 27th 1836 Botanist

Dear Sir.

I hope you will do me the justice to believe that I have not forgotten you; my delay is owing to the multiplicity of my occupations. I have some leisure during the Christmas holidays, and it is with feelings of pleasure that I fulfill my promise of writing you a letter. I cannot help acknowledging your kind note written on your departure from our city. I return you my sincere thanks for all the attention you have paid to me. I did not receive as yet any specimens of Myrica cerifera, still I am not at a loss to account for it, for it is very probable that either you had no time to collect them, or if collected, they may have been lost, since this fall has been marked out for dreadful & frequent steamboat disasters on our western waters. Since you have left here, I made but few excursions, but they afforded me a great number of specimens. I have sent a box of 800 specimens & of nearly 200 species of seeds to one of my correspondents in Europe, the Professor of Botany in the university at Louvain in Belgium. I expect an equivalent set of dried specimens & of seeds in return from that gentleman. The rest of my specimens I will send either to France or to Germany, according to the opportunities that may present themselves. But I will invariably keep a full set of specimens for our own Museum. This will be exposed to gratify the curiosity of our visitors & chiefly of American & foreign botanists, all of whom you may invite to come & examine them; if I can be of service to them, they may confidently rely on my assurance to see their wishes accomplished. As to you Mr. Buckley, my kind & amiable friend, & think myself under great obligations to you: I desire to receive your orders & satisfy your wishes as far as they will be compatible with my situation & circumstances, & of course I am very willing to