John Clayton greets Linnaeus and acknowledges the receipt of a letter from Linnaeus [this letter has not come down to us], which he has read with great pleasure. Like Linnaeus himself, Clayton wishes that Linnaeus could visit Virginia. There is nobody there worth mentioning in botany or in natural history. Clayton studies Linnaeus’s works, and especially Hortus Cliffortianus, Genera plantarum and Flora Lapponica, day and night.
Clayton was very glad to hear that there were so many plants from Virginia in the Uppsala University Botanical Garden, grown from seeds sent to Linnaeus. Just now, Clayton does not have the seeds of Polygala Collinsonia and Claytonia that Linnaeus was eager to get, but he will collect them during the following summer and send them.
Last August, as soon as he had got the seeds of Claytonia that Linnaeus had sent him, Clayton had planted them in a suitable place in his garden, and he hoped that they would grow and produce seeds.
Clayton has received the four dissertations that Linnaeus had sent him. Clayton encloses a few seeds in this letter, which Clayton will send to Linnaeus’s friend Sandin [Johan Sandin] to be forwarded to Linnaeus.
Clayton had heard from England that Johann Georg Gmelin had started the printing of his Flora Sibirica in St. Petersburg, and Clayton would be glad to study it if it proves to be as good as Linnaeus’s Flora Lapponica.
Clayton apologizes for his bad Latin. He has been long without practising it in writing or in speech, so he has almost forgotten what he learned in his youth.
Clayton thanks Linnaeus for the great honour shown to him when he was elected a member of the Royal Society of Sciences at Uppsala [Kungliga Vetenskaps-Societeten i Uppsala], and he hopes that he will be able to live up to his membership.
The letter ends with Clayton wishing a long and healthy life for Linnaeus, the leading scholar in botany, medicine and literature.