Garden developments: success of his recently constructed mushroom house, adapted from [Isaac] Oldacre's [(fl 1810s-1852), Lady Banks' gardener at Spring Grove, Isleworth, Middlesex] engraved plan but with flue above ground; explains benefits with small ink sketch. New peach house: Oldacre recommends "noblesse" and "Galande" as those which force best, but [James] Lee prefers the "Buckingham mignon"; details of the building.
Regrets missing the recent show of fruits at the Horticultural Society. Intends to try Lee's recommendation of Verdeltro grapes; reported to be very hardy and one of the grapes Madeira wine is made from. His daughter and Lady George Murray prefer the green Egyptian melon to any other. One of [Erik] Pontoppidan's [(1698-1764), Danish bishop] sea serpents "seems to have got down the American coast - to gobble up herrings!". Recently received 'Linnaea' specimen from [James] Brodie. Praises botanical zeal of Miss Murray, Lady George's unmarried daughter; she began with mosses and would walk five miles to find a 'Phuscum' and brought many mosses from Isle of Man; compares her beginning and Joseph Dalton's with 'Carex' to beginning music with thoroughbass.
Has an ear of 'Talavera' wheat from near Cirencester, [Gloucestershire], and two from Gordon Castle, [Moray]. Ate last green melon yesterday, small but excellent. Prices of apples: abundance of French apples at York imported to Hull, [Yorkshire], at 16/ per bushel; recently given 20/ for natives and 24/ at Thirsk, [Yorkshire], his gardener thinks the French "most like cur Hawthorn Dean".