NEEDFUL AID FOE PUBLICATION 341 



Our Government may assist by granting me a small salary, 

 or connecting me with Kew, so that I may have leisure 

 to work, and thus it may stop my clamorous mouth ; but 

 neither our Government nor the E. India Company will 

 give a sum, in any way proportioned to the work. What 

 would a thousand pounds be, for a job, the labour of which 

 must stretch over fifteen years ? And I trow they will 

 never award loth a salary to me, and money for the work. 



The question may be simplified by merely asking what 

 is to become of my materials, MSS., and collections, on 

 my return ? I cannot undertake their arrangement, much 

 less their publication, unless I am settled. If it be at all 

 practicable, I desire to push for a house and small salary, 

 attached to the Garden, and at once, because (firstly) Mr. 

 Aiton's is now vacant, and (secondly) because the magnitude 

 of my collections requires to be considered and accom- 

 modated. (Thirdly) because the money might now be 

 granted as the continuance of an allowance hitherto enjoyed 

 by a man, already in the service of the Government, and 

 who has done his utmost to please his employers. They 

 surely could never cast me wholly off, on my return ? 

 (Still, there seems on other grounds an evident leaning 

 that way) But it must be surely remembered that I have 

 hitherto received nothing in the shape of salary, and that 

 every shilling has been spent in collecting and on travelling 

 expenses. I do not much relish the idea of a Government 

 Grant towards the cost of publication. It might only leave 

 us in the lurch, as was the case with the Flora Antarctica. 

 And supposing that Fitch's services should be no longer 

 available what sort of a predicament should I be in then ? 



The Admiralty, as you are aware, give me a salary and 

 a grant, and the Woods and Forests, or whatever body may 

 employ me, cannot (I should hope) do less. A salary would 

 be far better for me than a grant as enabling me to work up 

 my Journals ; they cannot otherwise be given to the world. 

 For such books as the work on Rhododendrons and its con- 

 tinuation, I shall grudge neither the plates nor the little 

 trouble requisite to draw up the descriptions. But when 

 such work is involved as the laborious publication of my 

 Journals, of a systematic botanical work, or of the scientific 

 results of various kinds, arising from my travels, I must 



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