394 FINAL BOTANICAL WORK 



To the latter he writes (November 11, 1903) : 



I am glad of your letter for I have wanted to let you know 

 how grateful I am for what King tells me you have done 

 towards correcting the sketch. I have adopted all your 

 suggestions, but King tells me that I had better go over some 

 passages with you in respect to making them clearer to 

 Forest Officers. The oftener I re-read my Essay the less 

 I like it, but I do not see what more I can do. The fact is, 

 that except at Calcutta the Botanists of India have been 

 asleep since the days of Wight, Beddome, Law, Stocks, 

 Dalzell and a few others. The men of Bombay and Madras, 

 ' Professors of Botany ' though they be, have done nothing 

 at all. 



As he wrote on receiving Mr. Bolus's ' Sketch of the Floral 

 Regions of S. Africa ' (October 15, 1905) : 



Your sketch is all as clear as a bell, and I cannot help 

 comparing it * longo post intervallo ' with my sketch of the 

 Flora of British India, much to the disadvantage of the latter. 

 My excuse is that we have no one area in India so well botani- 

 cally explored as any of your Regions. Vast areas indeed 

 are actually unexplored, though everywhere accessible, and 

 many of them peopled by Forest Officers, all of whom have 

 had some botanical teaching. 



The Kashmir collections arrived before he was quite ready 

 to turn to them. He had to restrain his eagerness. But he 

 writes to Mr. Duthie, August 20, 1902 : 



At last I have got so far through my sketch of my father's 

 life, that I dared to look at Inayat's Kashmir Impatiens. 

 I make 8 species out of them, after a very careful analysis. 

 The specimens are splendid, and the separated organs in- 

 valuable. ... It is quite a pleasure to draw the sepals, 

 standard, wings, lip, from the detached specimens. 



By the middle of February 1903 he was sufficiently free 

 of other work to return to the Balsams. ' I must now go to 

 Impatiens,' he tells Gamble (February 9, 1903), 'which really 

 terrifies me. I cannot get good groups, and they keep me 



