444 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION [Chap. VI 



Letter 338 ... As to your P.S. If you have time to send me a 

 longer list of your protean genera, I will say if they seem to 

 be protean here. Of those you mention : — 



Salix, I really know nothing about. 



Rubus, the N. American species, with one exception, are 

 very clearly marked indeed. 



Mentha, we have only one wild species ; that has two 

 pretty well-marked forms, which have been taken for species ; 

 one smooth, the other hairy. 



Saxifraga, gives no trouble here. 



Myosotis, only one or two species here, and those very 

 well marked. 



Hieracium, few species, but pretty well marked. 



Rosa, putting down a set of nominal species, leaves us 

 four ; two of them polymorphous, but easy to distinguish. . . . 



Letter 339 To J- D - Hooker. 



Down, [1857 ?] 



One must judge by one's own light, however imperfect, 

 and as I have found no other book ' so useful to me, I am 

 bound to feel grateful : no doubt it is in main part owing to 

 the concentrated light of the noble art of compilation. 2 I was 

 aware that he was not the first who had insisted on range of 

 Monocots. (Was not R. Brown [with] Flinders?), 3 and I 

 fancy I only used expression " strongly insisted on," — but it is 

 quite unimportant. 



If you and I had time to waste, I should like to go over his 

 [De Candolle's] book and point out the several subjects in 

 which I fancy he is original. His remarks on the relations 

 of naturalised plants will be very useful to me ; on the 

 ranges of large families seemed to me good, though I believe 

 he has made a great blunder in taking families instead of 

 smaller groups, as I have been delighted to find in A. Gray's 

 last paper. But it is no use going on. 



I do so wish I could understand clearly why you do not 

 at all believe in accidental means of dispersion of plants. 



' A. de Candolle's Geographic Botanique, 1855. 

 1 See Letter 49, p. 95. 



3 M. Flinders' Voyage to Terra Australis in 1801-3, in H.M.S. 

 Investigator ; with Botanical Appendix, by Robert Brown, London, 1814. 



