Autograph letter signed to Dawson Turner
Publisher Information: Cambridge: 1802.
Donn, James (1758-1813). Autograph letter signed to Dawson Turner (1775-1858). 2 – 1/2 pages. Cambridge, 14 December 1802. 217 x 191 mm. Tiny lacunae in both leaves not affecting text, otherwise fine.
From English botanist James Donn, curator of the Cambridge University Botanic Gardens from 1790 until his death and author of Hortus Cantabrigensis (1796 and later editions), to fellow botanist Dawson Turner, author of several botanical works including Synopsis of British Fuci (1802) and Botanist’s Guide through England and Wales (1805), and father-in-law of William Jackson Hooker. Donn and Turner were evidently in the habit of exchanging botanical specimens with one another; in his letter Donn acknowledges the receipt of a “tin box” from Turner and states that while he “has only time, presently, to send you the Carex stricta, depauperata and clandestina,” he will soon “send you a pacquet of seeds for your garden.” Since he knows that Turner habitually corresponds with German botanists, Donn asks him
"if you will take the trouble when you write to request of them to send you seeds of such things as they have to spare but particularly the seeds of grasses. They have no occasion to be very nice in selecting them, as many times the most common sorts are acceptable and if I have them before it is only throwing them aside . . . I have added at bottom a list of a few things I want."
Under his “List of wants” Donn enumerated the following species: Milium lendigerum (i.e. Gastridium ventricosum or nitgrass); Agrostis spica venti (sweet bentgrass); Aira canescens (gray hairgrass); Bromus racemosus (bald brome); Galium anglicum (Lamarck’s bedstraw) and Centaurea solstitialis (yellow star-thistle).
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