Writing after a fourteen-day stay in Gibraltar, with travel there and back taking a further nine days, Clas Alströmer comments unfavourably on Spanish roads, cost of horses, roadside accommodation, mockery endured by at least one foreigner, and heat. Of Gibraltar he mentions no person but only the presence of Simia sylvanus wild on the Rock and tamed in the town. On the road and in Gibraltar he collected specimens of which some are unknown; he will send them, numbered, as soon as possible to Linnaeus whom he asks to give as promised the names to be assigned to those he has retained. He has seldom time to examine living plants and has become more aware in foreign parts than at home of his deficient knowledge. Panorpa coa abounds in loose sand at Gibraltar. Scarcely noticeable Alea erecta and forceps ani imply this insect is an Ephemera or, on account of the proportions of its wings, of a novel Genus. Fredrik Hasselquist’s descriptio alarum states ab apice ultra medium lineares that should be e basi ultra medium lineares; this description is otherwise apposite excepting a slight difference in the colour of the posterior wings. He has seen a Parus major at Cadiz, a species he has never seen in Sweden in summer.
Asked about the utility of his Caprificus, a gardener in Cadiz told him its Flores masculini turn into small flies that enter figs and, by stinging them, give them their taste and prevent them falling off the tree. Another man in Cadiz told Alströmer that, in Italy where he had travelled, a drop of oil introduced into a fig hastened its ripening. The writer has seen some Swedish trees including Pop[ulus] Alba, Ulmus and Alen; the latter always occurs together with Nerium oleander in and beside water. The scent of Lilium candidum on the Rock of Gibraltar is beautiful.
Two descriptions of plants that Linnaeus would know better than the writer, who can find neither in The System [Alströmer refers to the Systema naturae], are enclosed for the second time. The first is a bush with fine flowers occurring in a few places by streams in Andalusia.
The other is a peculiar plant, unknown to the writer, which grows on the bare hills between Gibraltar and Medina.
The writer begs information about them from Linnaeus. A collection of snails he saw at Gibraltar included an Argonauta eight inches long and five high, and a Scarabeus Hercules from the West Indies. Mercurialis annua grows to excess on walls in Gibraltar. The writer never found any foemina that lacked male flowers, but not in its racemes, and all mares had some female flowers; he needs more time to observe whether they are fertile or not. Mares are fewer than feminae. Parietaria Judaica often has four or six flores hermaphroditi in a calyce communi, of which the foliola then exceed six, but more are Cal[yce] Com[muni], 6 phyll[o] Continens 2 flores hermaphroditi unumque intermed[ium] femineum. Before pollination, antherae are contained in the filaments that are spiraliter involuta like the main spring of a watch. When the writer touched one with the point of a mail, it sprang up like such a spring, cracking both in anthera and expelling all pollen. The writer does not know whether this peculiar means of pollination has been observed previously. He has found Figura foliorum on a species of Cotyledonis to be very mutable so that differentia seems to be taken from some other plant. The fruit of Solanum lycopersicon, Hisp[anum] tomates[tomatoes], elaborately prepared, is much eaten here as a sauce with meat. Boiling dissipates its unspecified undesirable qualities and leaves a pleasantly acid juice.
The most common Spanish flavourings are Capiscum and garlic. The common-people’s food eaten by Alströmer seared his throat, causing him to think this “awful pepper” causes the guttural pronunciation of Spanish. The day before writing the foregoing he visited the Cadiz Royal Hospital, its garden, library, and medical and natural-history collections, having met Josepho Bejal, deputy to Pedro Virgili, the director, who was absent in Madrid. When the former showed him Impatiens balsamina and alleged its absence from the literature, Alströmer called this “a proof of his profound insight”. The qualitates and vires of the garden’s plants are known only as being allegedly curative individually of certain diseases. Having seen a living Mus monax from America, the writer says he will later examine it more closely. The Franciscans have promised him unrestricted access to their garden that contains an Arbor draconis. He saw a Fungue melitensis in the hospital garden and hopes to acquire a specimen. Melianthus flowers in Cadiz.
He has seen the mature Pericarpium of Peregrinas de Lima. Having collected innumerable seeds, he will send them from Madrid and encloses a commissioned drawing of Peregrinas de Lima.
José Carbonell, of the Admiralty school in Cadiz, a collector of natural-history specimens who has helped Claes Grill in Stockholm and Alströmer, and promises to help Linnaeus, has asked for help in acquiring his works, specifically Systema nature, 10th edition, Philosophia botanica , Critica botanica, Genera plantarum, Classes plantarum seu systemata planetarium, Bibliotheca botanica, Species plantarum, Amoenitates academicae . Alströmer asks Linnaeus to send them as soon as possible to Jacob Martin Bellman who can arrange payment; he has found many Cancer Diogenes among shellfish on the beach at Algeziras.
Statice sinuate occurs in and outside the Cadiz hospital garden. Virgili, having called Polygonum maritimum Fabago or Fabagoides, good-naturedly let himself be corrected. Cardiospermi character compendiosus in The System ought to be amended from Calyx triphyllus to tetraphyllus, and when that be done it will resemble sapindi character, if Nectaria cardiospermi not be added. This error and the absence of fruit caused Alströmer today almost to fail to recognise Cardiospermum and could inform Virgili about this. Caracter is also erroneous in Genera plantarum. There are innumerable Gerania here, as well as rapaceum and Plumbago Europea.
Alströmer recurs to the heat that causes plants specimens rapidly to wilt and is said locally to have contributed, together with over-activity, to Pehr Löfling’s fate and to have caused the death of a Spanish botanist. He admits to finding an extensive correspondence troublesome on his travels. He greets his friends, including Magister Bergman [Torbern Bergman], and sends his respects to Linnaeus’s wife[Sara Elisabet Linnaea] and daughters [Elisabeth Christina Linnaea, Louisa Linnaea, Sara Christina Linnaea, Sophia Linnaea], and to Carl Linnaeus the Younger.