BRITTEN (James, 1846-1924, F.L.S., Editor of the Journal of Botany for almost 45 Years)

Autograph Letter Signed to 'My dear Sir', ( Robert Morton MIDDLETON , jr., F.L.S., F.Z.S., 1846-1909, English shipbroker and botanist), telling him that "Our Museum cabinets are of mahogany, and cost about £7 each ... 'made to order' ... I should doubt the efficacy of camphor ... and yet [insects] certainly have existed here, and do not now, and we use nothing but camphor! Many thanks for the names, some of which were quite new to me, and all very acceptable ...", 2 facing sides 8vo., British Museum, 22nd September

Britten studied medicine, was at Kew 1869-1871, and from 1871 worked in the Botanical department of the British Museum. He compiled with Robert Holland the valuable 'Dictionary of English Plant Names', 1878-1886, and with G.S. Boulger the 'Biographical Index of British and Irish Botanists', 1893, which had first appeared in the Journal of Botany.
Middleton was employed at one time by the Hartlepools Shipowners' Society. About 1886 he and his wife settled in South Pittsburg, Tennessee, at the foot of the Cumberland Mountains. He corresponded with many leading naturalists, collected autographs, and presented a herbarium of some 3000 American and other specimens to McGill University in December 1890, returning permanently to England in 1892. With his wife and sister he spent 1904-1907 as a missionary in Chile. Again returning, he took a house in Kew and was a Temporary Assistant at the Natural History Museum till 1909.

Item Date:  1875

Stock No:  13903      £45

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