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Memoir 241
Forget not Mee & My Garden. . . , Peter Collinson wrote his Maryland friend George Robins in 1721. "If you have any Shells, Curious Stones, or any other Naturall Curiosity Remember Mee. I want one of your Humming Birds which you may send dry'd in its Feathers, and any Curious Insect." This theme echoed through Collinson's letters for the rest of his life, along with thanks for rarities received, introductions, cultivation instructions, encouragements, importunings, queries. Armstrong describes Collinson's correspondence as, "vigorous, brisk, and emphatic." His letters talk mainly of plants, but there are also antiquities, birds, butterflies, British imperial interests, sheep management in Spain, electricity, weather, fossils, insects, earthquakes, vine culture, Colonial policy, tithes, wars, terrapins, "an Infalible Remedy for the bite of a Mad Dog,' red Indians, astronomy, the making of salt, cheese fairs, the price of wheat, the power of snakes to charm, the Spanish threat to Florida, geology, French expansion," Hints . . . to Incorporate the Germans more with the [Pennsylvania] English. . . , the history of rice growing, premiums to encourage the production of silk, whether swallows migrate or winter-over under water, "Old Hock" as a remedy for gout, thundergusts, magnetism, Bezoar stones, & now & then a Quakerly comment. This selection of 187 letters is enhanced with over 120 illustrations (portraits and botanical drawings among them), some by Mark Catesby, Georg Dionysius Ehret, William Bartram, many in color. Includes notes & commentary for most letters. |
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