248 KEW : 1879-1885 



have been persuaded to throw all other work aside for the 

 ten last years for Flor. Bor. Amer. ! 



We have much accelerated the work of intercalation at 

 the Herbarium, and shall do more yet. I am putting away 

 my Indian accessories and am more than ever impressed 

 with the huge waste of labour in putting away a few at a 

 time. We have adopted the supplementary pigeon holes 

 at the ends of large genera and small orders, &c. It is the 

 gigantic accessories that now weigh on us, and to decide when 

 and where to stop gluing down more specimens is distracting. 



Other letters of the period again illustrate the sustained 

 interest in the botanical work that was being done in India and 

 the colonies. Now it is a matter of detail. Mr. Duthie is going 

 into the Himalayas ; he is bidden make special pilgrimage in 

 search of a strange plant with a strange history. 



To Mr. Duthie 



August 12, 1882. 



Strachey and Winterbotham found in Kumaon a most 

 remarkable little plant, which neither Brown nor any other 

 botanist could refer to any natural order. I made a careful 

 drawing of it, with full analyses for the Linnean Society, 

 some 28 years ago. This and the specimens were lost 

 soon after, and nothing more was known or heard of the 

 plant till Maximo vicz sent us a specimen from N. China as 

 an unintelligible nondescript, and he has since published it 

 as Circaeaster agrestis, Max. in Bull. Acad. Petrop. xi., 345, 

 and adopted an idea of Oliver's which I hardly share, that it- 

 is Chloranfhaceous. 



Now I think perhaps you may be able to re-find this 

 pigmy, so I send you a rude sketch of it ; and I have asked 

 Strachey, who remembers it well, for the exact locality, 

 which is at ' Saba Udiyar, on an overhanging rock, at or 

 near the halting place below Ealam, on the road from the 

 Gori valley Jalat or Munshari, elevation ? 8000 feet.' 



The plant is worth a pilgrimage, for I know nothing in 



the least like it. 

 / 



A year later he identifies various plants in Mr. Duthie's col- 

 lection from the Alpine Himalayan region, and adds a postscript 



