William Carey, Serampore, to Nathaniel Wallich, [Calcutta], Monday, 13 January [c. mid-1820s].

My Dear Wallich

         I send Ram Chund for the plants, and by him I send you

                     1 Gymmostyles anthemifolia

                     2 Gardenia? Raised from Seeds sent by Loddiges.[1]

                     3 Lobelia – a larger species than [refrem?].

                     4 Chrysanthemum indiacum. White

                     5 Bellis pendennis

                     6 Tanacetum vulgare

                     7 ------ erisimum

                                 Affecty yours

                                             W Carey

Monday 13th Jany

Address: Dr Wallich

Postmark: none

Text: University of Edinburgh, Special Collections, La. II. 646/70 (4).

[1] Conrad Loddige & Sons operated a large nursery in Mare Street, Hackney. Lod- dige opened his first nursery in Hackney in 1787; by 1842, William Robinson, a Hackney antiquarian, would declare that Loddige’s nursery represented “the finest display of exotics ever collected in this country.” By the date of the above letter, his nursery, later operated by his sons William and George, encompassed more than fifteen acres, where, Robinson writes, “productions from every part of the globe are cultivated, requiring a course of variety of temparature [sic]: for those from the tropical climates houses have been erected from twelve to forty feet in height. Of palms there are nearly two hundred species, and of orchiderus plants nearly two thousand.” Robinson adds, “The temperate houses extend upwards of 800 feet in length, and ample space is there devoted to camelias and plants from South America and New Holland, as well as heaths and multitudes of other plants from the Cape of Good Hope.” To Robinson, there was no possibility of Loddige’s nursery ever “ex- hausting the countless wonders of nature.” See Pigot and Co.'s London & Provincial New Commercial Directory for 1827-8 (London: J. Pigot, [1827]) 187; William Robin- son, The History and Antiquities of the Parish of Hackney, in the County of Middlesex, 2 vols. (London: John Bowyer Nichols and Son, W. Pickering, and Caleb Turner, 1842- 43) 1:90, 91.