THE INDIAN GRASSES 285 



topped by Mr. Duthie's last bundle from Kashmir, and his yet 

 more important collections from Central India, which linked 

 Northern and Southern India. For four months he does not 

 get through one species a day, identification being often a matter 

 of counting nerves in the glumes under a microscope in an 

 enormous number of specimens. The synonymy is ' frightful ' ; 

 for example, all the species of three other genera have been put 

 into Panicum at one time or other. It was impossible even 

 to ' divide it into good groups ; all characters inosculate hope- 

 lessly. The only way to get on is to make pencil sketches 

 of the spikelets and their parts on scores of sheets of speci- 

 mens, often of one species only.' P. sanguinale alone, of 

 which he unearthed 86 synonyms, kept him for three weeks. 

 A large form of this, noted in the Himalayan Journals as 

 being grown for food in the Khasia, found mention nowhere 

 else, and could not be safely identified with herbarium speci- 

 latest wrongly labelled or described. Worse still, even the 

 mens investigator, Hackel, had made a new species of a hairy 

 state of one of its foims and " has already been floundering, 

 by taking up individual specimens for description." (March 

 15, 1894.) 



To Mr. Duthie 



March 15, 1894. 



Occasionally I, for a change, take up the Andropogs, 

 which Hackel has worked out well ; but tooth- drawing is 

 nothing to working with Hackel ; you are in agony till you 

 have waded through his line after line of characters, many of 

 which apply to the whole genus if not to all the vegetable 

 kingdom I was going to say. He has not found out that it is 

 a perfect matter of indifference to most grasses, whether they 

 wear hairs or not. Still I should not complain ; if Hackel 

 had not done the Andropogs, I do not know who would ; 

 and I feel sure no one would have done them more con- 

 scientiously. 



I wonder what you will say to Clarke's l Cyperaceae, the 

 most important of all contributions to the Flora. 



1 Charles Baron Clarke (1832-1906), botanist and collector. Educated at 

 King's CoUege School, London, and Cambridge, bracketed Third Wrangler 1856, 

 and elected Fellow of Queen's College 1857. He was called to the Bar in 1858, 

 and in 1866 joined the Educational Department in Bengal. He acted as Super- 



