Letter received by Banks from Marmaduke Tunstall, 28 June1785 (Series 72.187) - No. 0003

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answer any queries, you might propose to him about it.  Was almost tempted to have sent up with it a curious specimen lately brought me of matting of the roots of grass, so compactly united as to form a substance so much resembling cloth as to be difficult at first to distinguish it, not unresembling some of the thinner Otaheite cloths, it was dug up near Raby & was formed between two stones, some of the grass was living at the ends & seemed I think a species of Carex tho' am but a young botanist, particularly in the grasses, it's dimensions were full two feet squares in some places very compact, in others thin. 

     I have one circumstance to trouble you with, which perhaps you may not think uninteresting, you remmember [remember] well I don't doubt Mr J: Hunter's dissertation on the free-martin in the transactions of 1779, which he supposes constantly an Universal rule to take place in every cow-calf twin with a bull, tho' no one has a higher opinion of his abilities than myself & tho' I could easily Imagine such mat-formations might often