On This Day, 215 years ago, 29th December 1810, Ellen wrote to Dawson Turner. She had been ill again and unable to go out for two months ’until this day’. She gives descriptions and/or make comments on at least eight lichens, a couple of Conferva (fresh water algae) and one flowering plant, a Hawkweed (Hieracium…
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215 years ago, On This Day, 9th November 1810, Ellen Hutchins wrote to Dawson Turner. She laid out her ideas for ‘the arrangement of the submersed Algae’, described a whale that had been killed in Bantry Bay and asked Dawson Turner to write Bantry, Ireland clearly on letters to her as they were being delayed…
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On This Day, 215 years ago, 17th October 1810, Dawson Turner wrote to Ellen. The letter includes great praise for Ellen’s latest drawings, a significant request for Ellen’s ideas on ‘the genera of the submerged algae’, an account of Sir Thomas Gage’s appreciation of Ellen, three charades and a French puzzle (see featured image above).…
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215 years ago, On This Day, 22nd September 1810, Ellen Hutchins received a letter from Dawson Turner and wrote another letter to him, just five days since her last one. It is an informative letter covering botany and much else, including a description by Ellen of her home setting and how she viewed herself. Read…
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On This Day, 215 years ago, 17th September 1810, Ellen Hutchins wrote to Dawson Turner. She covers a wide range of subjects and it has some great passages within it. Read the full letter HERE. The letter ends with a list of 48 Confervae (at that time a genus of marine and freshwater algae) that…
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On This Day, 215 years ago – 13th September 1810 – Dawson Turner wrote to Ellen Hutchins. He expressed concern at not having heard from her. The volumes of Dawson Turner correspondence in the Wren library at Trinity College Cambridge have a letter from Ellen Hutchins to him dated 24th July 1810, so the gap…
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9th August 1810, On This Day, 215 years ago, Dawson Turner wrote to Ellen Hutchins with news that the Pinguicula which Ellen had been describing in her letter of 24th July was figured in the July number of English Botany. The figure / plate / drawing of it is above. Read the letter from 9th…
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The image above is one of Ellen Hutchins’ specimens of Fucus viridis, now named Desmarestia viridis and commonly known as Desmarest’s Green Weed or Stringy Acid Kelp. Finding it On 15th February 1807, Ellen wrote to James Mackay of Trinity College Dublin ‘Fucus viridis I believe grows some where in this bay. I have got…
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On This Day, 215 years ago, 26th July 1810, Dawson Turner wrote a very short letter to Ellen Hutchins to enclose a note about Jungermanniae (liverworts) from William Jackson Hooker. Dawson Turner also sent an etching that his wife had done the week before and added a postscript to the letter – ‘Tell me, I…
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On this day, 215 years ago, 24th July 1810, Ellen Hutchins wrote to Dawson Turner about botanical matters, friendship and poetry. Read the full letter from 24th July 1810 HERE. The Lady of the Lake Walter Scott’s narrative poem is set in the Trossachs region of Scotland and its heroine is named Ellen. The…
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