Peter Forsskål has been botanizing in the desert around Cairo and is now in Alexandria where the climate is quite different. He is surprised that the knowledge of Egyptian plants is so scanty. It is probably due to the fear of robbers, roaming Arabs and Bedouins. Forsskål was himself robbed once and had to return home practically naked but unscathed.
He has collected 120 species of plants, among them several new ones.
Forsskål will later, in an open letter, send Linnaeus a description of two new genera, one from the class Syngenesia and one from the class Tetradynamia.
On 18 December he sent a letter to Linnaeus [Forsskål to Linnaeus, 18 December 1761{L3003}], together with seeds. In all he has now sent 200 since he sent the first from Constantinople.
He also wrote letters in September from Alexandria to be sent via Livorno [Forsskål to Linnaeus, 4 September 1761{L2965} and {L5426}], and about a month ago from Cairo to be sent via Marseille [this letter has not come down to us]. This letter will go via Livorno.
Forsskål entreats Linnaeus to inform his father [Johannes Forsskål] about his whereabouts or, if his father would have passed away, to instruct some of his nearest relatives to do this. Johan Peter Falck, or anyone who stays in Linnaeus’s house.
No letters from Linnaeus have reached him since he left Constantinople. From there he wrote three letters [see above and Forsskål to Linnaeus, 1 August 1761{L2949}], one in an unsealed letter via Denmark.
There are no news about the plague in this area. The expedition will travel to Mount Sinai, but he is not sure he will arrive there in the flowering season.
Forsskål has been healthy since he left on this expedition. P.S. 1. Forsskål sends his regards to all his friends in Uppsala. He longs for news from Sweden, what political good deeds that occurred and what fate his writings have met. Letters to him can be sent to the Danish consul, Peter Bartels, in Livorno who will forward them to the Danish consul in Alexandria [Jean François Marion] who will forward them to Cairo. That way of corresponding will be the shortest and best, as there are now many ships passing between Alexandria and Livorno.
P.S. 2. Letters can also be sent to the French consul Bertelet [Louis-Antoine de Bertellet] in Livorno, who is also the Swedish consul there.