From what I have seen of the performances of the artists employed by the cabinet, I do not think that they have anticipated in any shape the merit of my drawings, especially in birds and in plants; to say nothing milder of them, they are in both articles infamous; the birds are so dissimilar from the truth, that the names of them are very necessarily wrote under, or over them, for fear of the old mistake of taking them for something else. I condescend upon the Erkoom as a proof of this. I gave a very fine specimen of this bird in great preservation to the King’s collection; and though I shewed them the original, they had not genius enough to make a representation that could with any degree of certainty be promised upon for a guess. When I was at Paris, they had a woman, who, in place of any merit, at least that I could judge of, was protected, as they said, by the queen, and who made, what she called, Drawings; those of plants were so little characteristic, that it was, strictly speaking, impossible, without a very great consideration, to know one plant from another: while there was, at same time, a man of the greatest merit, M. de Seve, absolutely without employment; tho’, in my opinion, he was the best painter of every part of natural history either in France or England.
_London Published Dec.^r 1.^{ st} 1789 by G. Robinson & Co._]
This beautiful tree, now presented to the reader, is the production of the south and S. W. parts of Abyssinia. It is very frequent, and, with the ebony, almost the only wood of the province of Kuara, of which it bears the name; indeed in all Fazuclo, Nuba, and Guba, and the countries where there is gold. It is here designed in its natural size both leaves, flowers, and fruit, the whole so plainly, that it is needless to descant upon its particular parts, well known to naturalists. It is what they call a Corallodendron, probably from the colour of its flowers or of its fruit, both equal in colour to coral.
Its fruit is a red bean, with a black spot in the middle of it, which is inclosed in a round capsula, or covering, of a woody nature, very tough and hard. This bean seems to have been in the earliest ages used for a weight of gold among the Shangalla, where that metal is found all over Africa; and by repeated experiments, I have found that, from the time of its being gathered, it varies very little in weight, and may perhaps have been the very best choice that therefore could have been made between the collectors and the buyers of gold.