356 THE EETURN FROM INDIA 



Part of the plan was to find trustworthy specialists to 

 deal with certain Orders. Thus Hooker writes in July 1852 

 to Munro, 1 the soldier-botanist, the * wonderful grass-man/ 

 who had been arranging the grasses in the Kew Herbarium, 

 and who was keen enough to send home a collection of plants 

 from the Crimea in the intervals of fighting : 



Bentham has already taken to preparing the Legumi- 

 nosae Indicae. We shall ourselves commence with Ranun- 

 culaceae as soon as the collections are arranged, and beat 

 about for assistance amongst good and true friends, print- 

 ing for them at once, offering them copies for their labour, 

 and selections from the complete collections in order of 

 the extent and value of their contributions. What do 

 you say to a Graminologia Indica with short, terse generic 

 and specific characters, synonyms and a summary of the 

 Geog. distrib. of the species, to be printed, published, and 

 distributed gratis, to a certain extent, by ourselves as 

 ' Munro's Gram. Ind.,' giving you 50 copies, and after dis- 

 tributing to all. deserving public and private establishments, 

 putting the remainder into a publisher's hands to sell ? 

 Such is our present idea of proceeding. Will you kindly 

 think the subject over and offer any suggestions, not so much 

 with reference to your doing the Grasses, as to the general 

 principle? Great progress might thus be made towards a 

 Flora Indica, by the serial publication of large Nat. Ords. 

 and groups of small do. complete in themselves. We shall 

 be very careful how we trust the materials to authors we 

 have not satisfactory experience of. 



But its completion was a task beyond even such energetic 

 men. Time and opportunity were too scanty. Hooker was 

 deep in other work. Thomson was bound to return to India. 

 Enthusiasm did its best, and he had plunged eagerly into 

 work, lightly proposing as a side occupation to index the 

 Kew Herbarium, to Hooker's grim amusement. He was 

 wholly in sympathy with the views of his fellow- worker. 



1 William Munro (1818-80) saw active service in the Sikh war and the 

 Crimea, and held the West Indian command from 1870 to 1876. During the 

 many years his regiment was in India he studied botany, becoming the chief 

 authority on the Grasses. He did not live to complete his general monograph 

 of the whole order of Gramineae undertaken after his retirement. 



