Letter from Jos. D. Hooker [Joseph Dalton Hooker] to George Maw

Information

Scope & content: Written from Royal Gardens, Kew. Manuscript

He hopes the only cause for the long gap in their correspondence is, as it is for him, overwork; he has been working hard at their Arboretum, which he has catalogued and is checking all the specimens himself; the order of tally mounts to St Notts Malleable Iron Company has turned out to be a swindle, as not 20 percent of the mounts take the tally at all; he sent a specimen as an example; some were sent with one arm broken off, and galvanised over the fractured end; unfortunately, Smith [John Smith, curator at Kew] paid the bill before he opened the box, and as he has been on leave since, no further steps can be taken; he now has hundreds of useless mounts, as the malleable iron is too brittle to allow for stretching; he proposes to send some tree names to Maw to be put on No 9 hanging labels; he would be glad of a sample of the ‘round hand’ adapted for a tally, on a slip of paper to scale, so he can judge between block letters and round hand [an accompanying sketch of a tally with round hand is drawn in the body of the letter]

Credit Line: Courtesy of David Symonds Hooker / The Descendants of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker / RHS Lindley Collections