1861—62] BOTANICAL CORRESPONDENCE. 355 



To Sir Joseph D. Hooker, K.C.S.I. 



Cambridge, Nov. 16, 1861. 



Dear Hooker, — I am very much obliged to you for sending the 

 Celts. The three are very valuable additions to the Museum, and I 

 purpose presenting them in the name of our lamented friend, unless 

 I am directed by you to act otherwise. The dentritic mark is 

 exceedingly curious, and I think that Henslow was fully authorized 

 in believing it to be a proof of extreme antiquity. I do not know 

 anything about the implements of which you have sent casts. What 

 sort of things are the implements found at Hoxne, and considered 

 as of the same date as the French ones ? Can these be they ? I 

 rather fancy not, as they seem to belong to a much later type. — 

 Yours truly, Charles C. Babington. 



To Professor J. H. Balfour, M.D. 



Cambridge, Dec. 24, 1861. 

 Dear Balfour, — I return the herbarium specimens, and hope that 

 they will arrive safely. There is no Iso'etes echinospora amongst 

 them, nor, I am sorry to add, can I now send one to you. My 

 specimens of it (only gathered by me once) are mostly gone to 

 M. Gay at Paris. I am not absolutely certain of the exact place 

 where I found the plant, so long since as August, 1847, but believe 

 that I do know. I have obtained specimens, all lacustris, from ten 

 or twelve different places in Carnarvonshire, but no one of these is 

 just the spot in question. All the specimens that I have seen from 

 Scotland and Ireland are lacustris. Gay sends me echinospwa from 

 central France, and thinks that he has it from Sweden. Our plants 

 should be looked for in mountain lakes everywhere, in September, 

 in the hopes of finding the new plant. It is of no use to gather 

 them without the larger spores being in a well-advanced state. I 

 have only to add that I do not think it right to publish the discovery 

 of echinospmu (Dur. MSS.) as a native plant at present. For we 

 should do wrong to anticipate Messrs. Dureau and Gay in their 

 forthcoming essay — intended to appear in the spring of 1862. — 

 Yours very truly, Charles C. Babington. 



To Charles Darwin, Esq. 



Cambridge, Sept. 16, 1862. 



Dear Darwin, — I hope to be able to get seeds of Lythrum hyssopi- 

 folium from our Botanic Garden in a few days. The Curator has 

 undertaken to look for them, and I will send them when received. 

 You know that the British Association is to meet here on October 1 

 next, and it would give great pleasure to many of us to see you here 

 at that time. Could we have calculated upon your convenience and 

 health allowing you to take the office, we should have advised your 



