(seq. 5)

17. Dec. 1810

[postmark]
LANCAR . P PAID 25
DEC
[17]
Stephen Elliott
Esquire
at
Beaufort
South Carolina

franco

Lancaster Dec. 17, 1810

Sir

Your letter of Oct. 13. and Nov. 5 would have been answered long before this
but I expected to receive the promised packet first, which has hitherto
not arrived. Probably Capt. Serrit may be bring it when he returns. I return
you my best thanks for your persevering kindness.

If I understood you rightly you will be from home and at the seat of legislature
Columbia for 6 months. Pray can I address a letter to you at Columbia or any
other place from home or will Mrs. Elliot forward my letters to you where ever you
are? And shall I have the pleasure to receive a letter from you
though you
are from home? Your letters are so pleasing and instructive to me, that I wish
to have them from every place when ever you are at leisure and are note hin-
dred by multiplicity of other business. Should you remain at Columbia till spring
how pleasing would a catalogue and calendarium of Columbian plants be to me!
We could then find exactly the difference of climate.

Since my last (which was dated Aug. 27 — what a long time!) I had some opportu-
nities to enlarge my botanical researches. From Europe I have received an excellent
new work Willdenowii enumeratio plantarum Horti regii Berloniensis, containing all
the plants growing in the botanical garden there. I find among them a number
on N American plants well described. With this Enumeratio I received the Dioecia
and Polygamia Spec. Plantar. Should you not have this volume, your are
exceedingly wellcome to it, as I had it allready. The Filices of Willd. are published
but not yet come to hand.

Early in October I was in Philadelphia on a visit and added about 180 plants
to my herbarium. Mr. Lyon has a noble collection chiefly of southern plants
Mr. McMahon goes on very briskly, D. Barton has erected a small garden and
green house near his dwelling, Mr. Enslin is almost gone and past recovery at
a consumption. Mr. Hamilton very near the same with out much hope, and his
botanical garden hastening to ruin. An excursion to the Jersies pleased me more
then all most all the botanical gardens put together, there I saw nature, in the
garden stiff art. Some time ago I received 100 seeds from Cherokee, and immediately
after a letter from Olav Swarz in Sweden information that my packet to him with very near
all our mosses and lichens had safely arrived and that after a careful exami-
nation an exact answer shall be returned. This answer I now anxiously expect.

We had here at Lancaster the first heavy frost Oct. 12, the first snow Nov. 1. The
fall was rather wet, our rivers high and much damage was done to Indian
corn, and potatoes, even now some are in the ground and under snow.

I am very much pleased that you have undertaken to write a flora of Caroli-
na and Georgia. Do it my dear sir, you will do a very good and necessary work.
Walter and Michaux have done and left much to do. Their descriptions are too short
and many plants were not seen by them. Perhaps the best method would be to begin the
full description in spring and describe the plants as they flower. Leave one page for
every plant and go on untill one volume is finished then make an index to the volume
and begin another. To this description add by degrees the seeds — root, use and
soil. From these volumes are brought into as system with great ease, and much
labour will be saved.

Your garden should contain the dubious plants, to have them near and get the
habit of them which is of great service. Indeed our American plants ought more
to be cultivated then foreign plants, they latter agree too little with our climate
and are soon lost, our native plants stand longer and as for beauty are certainly
not inferior to the foreign. What a noble sight would our Asters, Solidagines, Galar-
diae [Gaillardia], Helianthi, Rudbeckiae, and Lobeliae, Tradescantiae and others be. If among them
a foreigner appears let it be solitary, less the American plants are driven from their home.

Whatever I have of seeds native or imported you are wellcome to. Of Cryptogamia
I have a great number and I will very soon make up a packet for you and
so of other plants according as I conceive them necessary to ascertain the nomen-
clatur of our plants. One thing I much wish, do not forget to mention it when-
ever my plants are also natives of Carolina, I will do the same and then we
can know the extent of our plants better. Hitherto I sent but few except I supposed
them not growing with you. If my plants are not natives of Pennsylvania I add
the particular habitat.

Looking over your plants again as I very often do, some observations
occurred and some wishes arose which I mention, as dies diem docet —