Jean HERMANN (1738-1800), naturalist and botanist from Alsace; his collections and library are at the origin of the Strasbourg Natural History Museum. Autograph letter signed to the botanist Charles-Louis L'Héritier de Brutelle (1746-1800), from Joseph Banks, London. 3 pp. in-4. Strasbourg, 16 March 1787. Address on the back with armorial wax seal. A very fine letter to L'Héritier, while he was staying with Joseph Banks in London, in which he talks about his natural history cabinet. "I didn't know you were in England. How I envy you! Not only for the beautiful things you see, but also and above all for the interesting people you meet. What a man Mr Banks is! How I admire him! Give him a thousand respectful compliments from me [...]. I had dared to recommend him to our Public Library for the history of plants on which he is working, but having learned from all sides that it will only be through his generosity that we will be able to obtain it, and that it will not be sold commercially, I fear I may have been indiscreet. He mentions a consignment of butterflies sent to M. d'Orcy [Jean-Baptiste-François Gigot d'Orcy]. "He sends him publications that he would have liked to give him, but the state of his fortune no longer allows him to do so. "I exhausted myself in a field I loved until my forty-sixth year, when I began to receive a salary, which is still rather mediocre. I have to do the chemistry, look after the garden, the labels, the seeds, the correspondence, look after my cabinet so that the animals do not die, have books and instruments at my own expense & for all this I have no one to help me; only I have just been promised that I will have a boy apothecary to relieve me. You can see what I can do with that at a time when all these sciences in the hands of the richest people are advancing by leaps and bounds. It saddens me and I see nothing prospering & that with all this work & the deterioration of my very meagre economic affairs, I can do nothing worthwhile in any part. You wouldn't believe how these thoughts dampen my spirits and make me more and more unfit for work. So for some time now I have been plunged into a deep melancholy [...]". Engraved portrait attached.