wight's botanical lktters. 197 



you. I am now partly woiking, partly meditating on a re- 

 port for government, on the hills from whence I write, and 

 on this I must bestow considerable pains, as I had to-day a 

 letter informing me that " the Governor in Council had per- 

 used with much interest my letter of the I6th ult., contain- 

 ing the result of my recent touv on a range of mountains 

 near Shevagurry.'' From all this, added to a long report, 

 (twelve sheets,) on what I may call the present state of 

 India, and more especially of the Peninsula, sent in a few 

 days ago, you will not have much difficidty in concluding 

 that my time of late, has been fully occupied ; for though it 

 does not take long to write one of these reports when the 

 pen is once l\urly in hand, yet it takes no little time to pre- 

 pare and arrange the materials for them. In the midst of 

 these occupations, I have also devoted a good deal of time 

 to botanizing; I can scarcely say to Botany, for altliough my 

 collections swell rapidly in bulk, and present a considerable 

 number of new plants, I have as yet been unable to study 

 them. 1 have no doubt, speaking by guess, but I have addeil 

 a hundred species to the Peninsular Flora, and I have dried 

 three or four hundred a! togetlier, among which are about twenty 

 terrestrial Orchickix, as Hahenaria and its allies; but not one 

 of which I can possibly refer to Lindley's species; perhaps 

 however from my not having sufficiently studied the tribe to 

 enable me rightly to understand his generic and sectional char- 

 acters. We have here a new Clematis, perhaps two ; but the 

 second I have not seen in flower; a Circcea, nearly all the Neel- 

 gherry Ranunculacece, (but only a few in flower at this time,) 

 u Geranium^ Stellaria, and Cerastiiim, Docke?is, Thrashes, 

 Potentilla, a Magnolia, or something very like one (but I 

 have not found the fruit; it has five-seeded ovaries), a Rose^ 

 one or two species of Fassifoi-a, but only one in flower, a 

 Galium, Rubia, Pediciilaris, Osmunda, Ophioglossum, a fig 

 with clustered fruit as big as apples, a new Dodoncea, an 

 arboreous Osbeckia, not in flower; and several others. There 

 is also an arboreous Vaccinium? a great tree which is abun- 

 dant, hut so verv rare in flower, that I considered myself 



