“I shall be most rejoiced at a remote prospect of again setting to work.  I take no interest now in the vegetation of this country.  I hope to be at Loodianah early in November; my present intention is to run up to Simla, thence to Mussoorie, and descend on Seharunpore.  If I do this, I shall only leave one point unfinished, and that is the Hindoo-koosh Proper, where however I shall have the advantage of Major Sanders of the Engineers, who will pick up a few plants for me.  I wish much to take notes of the vegetation about Simla and Mussoorie, this I can do at a bad season.  I shall afterwards be able to compare the Himalayan chain at very distant points.”

* * * * *

Serampore, —­ 1841.

“I will send you to-morrow dissections of Santalum if I can get a small bottle for them:  under .5 inch lens you can easily open the pistillum of Santalum having previously removed the perianth:  it is a concial body; you must take care to get it out entire, especially at the base, then place it in water, and dissect off the ovula of which there are three or four, as per sketch.  I shall not say what I see, as I want to have your original opinion unbiassed, etc.; but whenever you see the tubes with filaments adhering to their apices, pray mark attentively what takes place, both at the point and at the place where the tube leaves the ovulum; your matchless 1/1500 would do the thing.  Try iodine with all such, after having examined them in water.

“Should you find any difficulty in dissecting away the ovula, light pressure under glass will relieve you.  I shall be very anxious to know what your opinion is, particularly with regard to the tubes and all adhering filaments; the question now occupying botanists, being this, is the embryo derived directly from the boyau or is it derived from some parts of the ovulum?

“I hope you can understand these sketches.”

* * * * *

Peshawur:  13th December, 1839.

“What a shame it is that botanists should know nothing whatever of the formation and structure of wood!  They look at a section of a piece of oak, and imagine they have discovered the secret, and write volumes on this imagination, yet they have been told over and over again, that nothing is to be learnt on such subjects without beginning at the commencement, which they are too idle to do.  To name an abominable Aster, is among them of much higher importance than to discover the cause of the growth of wood.  Medullary rays are most difficult, because they are very often deficient particularly in climbers.  I am horridly idle, and yet what can I do without books; yet with regard to books, the more originality we possess, the less we require them?  There is nothing to be got here except a few marsh plants coming into flower.  One beautiful Chara, which might disclose the secret, had I good glasses, it is a most graceful pellucid form, an undescribed duckweed, a floating Marchantiaceae.  Would that I was settled with a Ross on one hand, and a Strongstein on the other, around my collections with good health and good spirits.  Tell ——­ I have in view the division of the vegetable kingdom analagous to radiata, they include all the Marchantiaceae, and are, to all intents and purposes, Vegetable Radiata.”