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[Page 2]
no farther than Hounslow Heath, and try his still there, I will be bound he will be nearly lost in the knowledge of the plants there; let him take some home with him, and by comparing them with the garden ones, he will perhaps tell you their names; but, very likely the names by censuring will be found erroneus, but this does not signify, the habit alone for a collector is sufficient. If my ideas upon this subject, upon tryal are proved a fact, he is liable to the same errors in a foreign part, but, mind you there is no comparing with the garden plants there. It may probably be said, that he is well acquainted with the exotic ones, and particular with those of the Stone and greenhouse; but then is he not liable to send over british plants, you may say, he will not meet with any british ones, but look at Thurberg's prodromus of the cape plants, and you will find british plants mentioned in many places. If I am not in a Botanic Garden, I dare mention to say, that take botany throughout, there is not a man at Kew in so good practice as I am at the present. I know very well, they know plants locally.
I shall now have discoursing upon habitual Botany, and turn to what I call a more laudable subject, of which I find no one has even noticed, can you say otherwise, but what I may claim the inventions? I now mean the trying of benefitting agriculture, the dying art, the manufactoring branch, the Materia medica, and whatever I may meet with that appears to be of utility to the public.
Botany is not my only motive to pursuit, I have a very strong inclination for Anatomy, Zoology, Ornithology, Ichtheology, Entomology, and many other too frivolous now to mention; also of searching into the various arts and sciences. I do not say that I have ever shewn any such symptons to you before, but they were equally the same in my mind. My reasons for not putting them in execution were because I could not afford to purchase books, materials etc, nor afford a recquisite time that these studies would require. I have bestowed the most attention upon botany, because it was the first that I begun with.