LORD EEDESDALE AS BOTANIST 291 



it best to spend the morning in attempts to compose a rider 

 on ' the Bamboo Garden,' and the matter of the blades. 

 I enclose it herewith, with tremor, you must kindly look 

 over it for me and give your candid opinion like the good 

 fellow you are, and let me have it back. 

 Ever, my beloved Censor, Yours, 



J. D. HOOKER. 



September 8, 1896. 



A thousand thanks, my dear Mitford. The difference 

 between our says resolves itself into mine being the work 

 of an at second hand hasher up of material not his own, 

 and which he has not fully grasped yours is the result 

 of- long and careful autopsy. 



The long and short of it is that what I would like and 

 crave is a brief statement of the dry facts from your pen 

 with leave to give it as such. In case of your agreeing, to 

 show what I want, I have extracted from your able exponent 

 what I should like to see. I have drawn a pencil round the 

 parts of your MSS. which I have not included to save you 

 the trouble of collation the rest is verbatim. Kindly look 

 at it. Excuse haste this is our afternoon for visitors. 



Ever yours, 



J. D. HOOKER. 



Sept. 10. I sent off the paragraph with the emendations, 

 and with it a thankful heart. 



In 1889 he published in the ' Annals of Botany ' (vol. iii, 

 pp. 135-40) a paper on the curious organism Pachytheca. 

 For half a century this was a puzzle to botanists. It was 

 a seed-like body found in the Ludlow bone-bed, and first 

 described by Hooker in 1853 in a note to H. E. Strickland's 1 

 paper on the fossils there found (Quarterly Journal of the 

 Geological Society). 



These specimens did not allow of transparent sections 

 being cut for the microscope, but the observations that could 



1 Hugh Edwin Strickland (1811-1853), naturalist; accompanied William 

 John Hamilton in a geological tour through Asia Minor, and traversed Greece, 

 Constantinople, Italy, and Switzerland, 1835; drew up rules for zoological 

 nomenclature, ultimately with some modifications accepted as authoritative. 

 Among several important scientific writings were Ornithological Synonyms, 

 1855, and The Dodo, 1848. 



