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Chadderton
Feby 4 1814
Sir
Pardon me for taking the liberty of now asking for the annuity you have had the goodness to promise. It may perhaps be necessary to State in some measure what urges me to make the application, which is no other than endeavouring to preserve the collection you were so kind as to let remain in my possession. It had all along been my intention to part with the duplicates, particularly in the animal line, and in which I must not forget to acknowledge your pointing out a likely person for a purchaser. On having finished the long and tedious business of plant cleaning, the skins were the next which fell under notice, and from the bad state of the greater part of them appeared to be in gave me reasons to believe but a small share would be a marketably commodity; and the remainder must either be given away or thrown into the fire to free any from incumbrance and expence, consequently that part of my labours would have been useless, and the objects as little known as if they had remained in this native place.
Now being unfit to follow any employment here, I set about stuffing birds, and occasionally employing another person in this time, and found by perseverance that many specimens might be saved, which perhaps would have been thrown aside in London. It is and always has been my wish, that New South Wales might yield something of use in commerce or manufacture, so as to become a standing article, to free it from an unjust censure of its never being of any use to the mother country, and that sending convicts there is too expensive. It is on this account I wish every specimen it has produced may be thoroughly looked into. In cutting my wood for specimens the sawdust I mean to keep until a byer had passed his judgement on it. The wood of Xylomelum pyriforme when fresh gave me great encouragement on this head, but now I have not so good an opinion of it. The increase of late of the silk manufacture in this country, and the high it bears, with a deal being of a bad quality, has strongly prepossessed me, that the climate of New South Wales is inferior to none for raising of this article. Indigo & Cochineal