384 FINAL BOTANICAL WOEK 



With regard to your herbarium specimens, the fire is 

 the best place for many of them, and so it is with all the 

 collections of the genus hitherto made ; and I would strongly 

 urge you to begin again, using a portfolio in collecting and 

 making notes on the spot, and above all getting capsules 

 and seeds carefully ticketed. If possible, drawings should 

 be made from fresh specimens. 



Prain hopes to have this latter done for the Sikkim 

 species. He is sending me the whole Calcutta collection ! 

 and I hope after the Ceylon Flora is finished to set to work 

 on revision of the Indian species of the genus. 



Without better materials than exist in herbaria it will 

 be exceedingly difficult to unravel the Himalayan species. 



By mid October, all the available Indian materials of 

 any importance had arrived ; and he exclaims to Mr. Duthie, 

 October 21, 1898 : 



To tell you the truth, I quail before the task of tackling 

 them. ... I think it is clear that my first job will be to sort 

 them geographically, as the only way of matching the hosts 

 of specimens which are either flowerless, or have the flowers 

 too damaged to be recognised. That done, I must get 

 them into natural groups according to Fl. Brit. India, and 

 so on. 



It was a year, however, before he had finished off the 

 Ceylon Handbook, down to the indexes of the five volumes, 

 and next day was able to begin seriously on the Balsams, 



Classification was not easy. ' I must confess,' he reports 

 to Mr. Duthie on October 18, ' that the outlook is far from re- 

 assuring and I quail before it.' After being for some weeks 

 ' deep or rather shallow in Impatiens ' he found them more 

 difficult than ever. The capsule offered the best primary 

 division, but the want of fruiting specimens was the greatest 

 difficulty, while many points for study could only be followed 

 on living plants. Some indeed very uncharacteristically ap- 

 peared not to burst elastically with resilient valves. But 

 seek as he might for a better co-ordination of the species 

 than that of the Flora of British India, he could, save in a few 

 particulars, see no material grounds for forming good groups, 



