Dear Sir

In april I shall give M^r Gough the perusal of M^r Low’s M.S.S. Please to direct me to whom I should deliver them in London. I really think he should relate in the course of his voyage any remarkables respecting the animals or plants; & give in at the end a systematic catalogue much as I have done in the Flora Scotica: the same with the plants referring not to Hudson but to M^r Lightfoot as a far better & a far abler man. Prints of Birds & rare plants may be dispersed in fit places in the voyage & a few of the most picturesque scenes. let him take care not to make it too voluminous for Bookseller will frightened [sic] with the expence.

The arts hurt poor Lightfoot have been shameful [sic]: all that is said in the review respecting the copying his prints from Haller or Oeder is totally false.¹

The Edda is translated in Mallet northern antiquities.

I am Dear Sir
y^r affect. humble Serv^t

Tho. Pennant

Downing Febr. 22^d 1778.

Be so good as to pay postage with the inclosed for Sir R. M. is not at home.

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Editorial notes

1. Lightfoot's Flora Scotica was less than favourably received in The Critical review, or, Annals of literature, 44 (April 1777), 285-287. Among other criticisms, the reviewer identifies several drawings in Flora Scotica as copes from Oeder’s Flora Danica (1761-1771) and Albrecht von Haller's Enumeratio methodica stirpium Helvetiae indigenarum (1742). As the chief sponsor of Flora Scotica, Pennant's resentment was no doubt increased by an adjacent and much warmer review of Flora Londinensis (1777) by William Curtis (287-292). The reviewer also recommends the ‘comprehensive view of English vegetables’ given in William Hudson’s Flora Anglica, which would be republished in enlarged form the following year.