Alexander Henry Haliday

“ Finding the improvement continue, I had hopes revived of receiving study correspondence, and more active exercise in the coming summer, though as yet I have accomplished no farther journey than that to Lucca; and in that town we (i.e. my cousin Mme Pisani) , her husband, and three nieces, with myself) have been housed since the beginning of the year, with the intention at first of making a stay of three months in town. ”

“ Consequently, I have lost many of my generic types, which I shall be lucky if I succeed in replacing hereafter, supposing I am able to follow the chase again:— while some that remain have been published in other quarters in the interval, which was a blank for me. ”

“ It killed down the myrtles over large tracts, and they look very dismal, but will , I expect , spring up again from the roots.Though so widely diffused, it is probably no more indigenous than the chesnut [sic] , the sughera , the vine, or the olive, all of which grow wild in Central Italy. Spring flowers are coming out, fresh violets, starry anemonies, celandine, daffodils in abundance ”

“ The description, which appears to apply,commences with the word “flava” indeed; but Geoffroy himself has given the specific name trimaculata to the insect (Entom. Proc. ii) . I am returned not long from a visit to the forest school installed newly in the convent of Vallombrosa [The first forestry school to exist in Italy was the Istituto Forestale di Vallombrosa founded August 15, 1869] . It may seem an odd time to go there, and I had intended deferring it to the spring ”

“ They are not however, I fancy, of the same importance to my object, as the types of Dalman’s & Thomson's species, now on their way to me. I think it is since I wrote to you last that I had a letter from Osten-Sacken accompanied, in his intention, with a copy of his memoir on Tipulidae. Curiously I had my pen in hand when the letter came, writing to a friend, who some time previously had told me of the proximate publication of this memoir,to get more particular information, that I might obtain it, as soon as it was out. However the book has not reached me, though the letter.has. ”