Wight's botanical i.irrERS. 189 



minute flowers and naked petals, whence, if new, I propose 

 to call it V. micrantha. 



Palamcottah, lldjuly, 1836. 



When 1 came here from Quilon, whence I last wrote to 

 you, I resolved to devote a week to putting up for you a set 

 of all my recent collections. Owing to their number, and other 

 circumstances, I have found two weeks scarcely sufficient, 

 and this without adding generic names or notes, further 

 than the place where, and time when gathered, i expected, 

 and certainly ought to have been, at least fifty miles from 

 this now, whereas in my anxiety to place within your reach 

 as large a mass of materials as possible for our second volume 

 of the Prodromus, I am still here, and must be some three 

 or four days longer, before I can get under way The pre- 

 sent despatch, exclusive of Ferns and uniques amounts to 1355 

 numbers : the whole is arranged in natural orders accord- 

 ing to your own paper in the EncyclopcBdia Britannica, which 

 will save you some time. Owing to bad weather for drj'ing, 

 deficient supplies of paper, and, still more, the sickly state 

 of my collectors who were unable to work, my Ceylon plants 

 have not turned out nearly so well as I could have wished. 

 You will notwithstanding find some good things among them, 

 and it is probable that Col. Walker, now that he has seen 

 my mode of collecting, will do as much in one year as he has 

 hitherto done altogether. He writes me that he had sent a 

 large despatch to Graham, with instructions to contribute as 

 largely as possible to you ; if they be numbered, send him as 

 speedily as you can, a list of those you get, as he now wishes 

 *o form an herbarium of named plants, and is especially de- 

 sirous of having his Ceylon ones named 



And now you may congratulate yourself that you will 

 have no more trouble from me in the plant way for a long 

 time to come, which I can easily imagine you are happy to 

 hear, after the unmerciful transmissions of the last twelve 

 months, amounting, as I believe they do, to upwards of two 

 thousand species of Phanerogamous plants. Large however 



