Wight's botanical lktters. 167 



to my stock: llie other two have not returned. I liave re- 

 cently examined Santalum album: it is truly a curious plant, 

 but I have not finished my observations through want of 

 proper specimens ; the ovule is said, even by Brovvu, to be 

 pendulous, but I find it erect, at least what appears to me to 

 be the ovule. Griffith says that it is first pendulous, and 

 afterwards erect, by the circumcision of the apex, about which 

 tune it contracts a new adhesion, viz., by the base, thus 

 changing its base in the course of growth ; I find something 

 like a hilum, but suspect I may be mistaken, as it is loosely 

 attached near the end of the seed most remote from the calyx, 

 with the radicle pointing upwards to the calyx, or inverse: 

 the ovule has nearly the shape of a Florence flask with a long 

 neck, attached by the thick end, while the narrow one is con- 

 tinued for some distance up the style. The tufts of hair (abor- 

 tive petals?) opposite the stamens, and the glands of the 

 calyx, appearing to be mere continuations of the disk, led 

 me at first to consider this plant allied to B-hamnece^ but a 

 recent examination of a Zizyphus upset that idea. I am now 

 principally employed in arranging my collections and laying 

 out specimens of all those mentioned in Ainslie's Mat. Medica, 

 with the view of publishing outline figures of ihem with de- 

 scriptions and accounts of their medical and economical pro- 

 perties, but arranged according to the Prodromus, forming 

 in that way a medical and systematic work. I have provided 

 two or three hundred drawings of one kind or another. I have 

 now tracings of all Roxburgh's Coromandel plants in a por- 

 table form, and have often thought that cheap and useful 

 editions of Rheede and Rumph might be published in that 

 way, all arranged in systematic order, I expect to have my 

 plants that are here assorted before my collections arrive 

 from Madras, and shall then compare and name the whole 

 collection for immediate distribution, at least so far as I have 

 named specimens to guide me. If I am sent to Bengal, I 

 fear that I shall have to intrust all my present collections to 

 your care, even at the risk of your saying " this is rather too 

 much of a good thing.' What glorious collections we shall 



