THE INDIAN FLOBA 247 



which is Dyer's special pet, is magnificent, and he has gone 

 in for Cycads, and by correspondence all over the world got 

 together a wonderful collection of them. 



What with his writing and his administrative work, he 

 finds himself so busy that he never gets to the Linnean and 

 very rarely to the Eoyal Society. In short, as he reiterates to 

 Hodgson (May 28, 1884) : * The Kew work does not decrease ; 

 the contrast between what the Directorship now is and that 

 when I took it is enormous, and I shall not be sorry to be 

 relieved of my share.' 



Most of his spare time went to the Flora of British India. 

 Progress was slow ; the number of species had exceeded his 

 estimate, and at the desire of many Indian botanists he had 

 expanded quotations and references far beyond his original 

 intention. At the same time the actual examination of the 

 specimens was exceedingly laborious. * Polygonum,' he re- 

 marks, ' was a hard task, but I think I have squared them all 

 up.' The Peppers, when he came to them, were ' by far the 

 worst genus I have ever had to do with, and I shall have to 

 assign lots of Miquel's and De Candolle's species to the limbo of 

 the unknowable.' A few weeks later : * I am groaning over 

 Myristica ! The species are indeterminable without ? and <? 

 flowers and fruit all three ! and the specimens of Manigey and 

 others play the deuce with Thomson's descriptions in Flora 

 Indica.' In the Laurels he had perforce to follow his old 

 grouping, but would have done them differently if he had had 

 time. One genus brings up a situation familiar in his early 

 systematic work : ' Cyanadaphne is I am sure a myth, and its 

 one species is in two or three other genera as well ! ' Finally, 

 the bibliographical details and the readjustments in the 

 Herbarium involved much drudgery, and he responds to Asa 

 Gray's sympathy on September 26, 1885 : 



Yes, the references to volumes, pages and plates are 

 horrible plagues. I groan over them daily. Nine-tenths 

 of them are not worth verifying. I am now bored with 

 revising the reprint of Gen. Plant., Part I. I sympathise 

 with your supplement work, but oh, how I wish you could 



