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MODEST AMBITIONS 339 



would give me a house at Kew for the collections, and 

 a small salary to engage my working them up for the 

 museum and public, and leave me to get a publisher who 

 would illustrate, and over whom I should have some hold 

 by having the offer of my Journal. I should greatly prefer 

 this to having a grant for publication made to me. I shall 

 never write well for profit, and would willingly give all 

 my materials, scientific and popular, to the publisher, 

 seeking no profit, but exercising a control over the amount 

 of ' illustration ' to be given to both Natural History and 

 Journal. 



Friends at home were more than ever eager that the vast 

 results of the Indian labours should not be thrown away. 

 Dr. Wallich offered his help if Hooker and Thomson should 

 take up a Flora of India, joining with them as a preliminary 

 in revising the Indian Herbarium at the Linnean. Hooker, 

 in reply (June 12, 1850), tells of the hard measure meted out 

 by the E.I.C. to Thomson, though he had lost all his splendid 

 outfit and collections in the Cabul campaign, and of his own 

 slender prospects from the Admiralty and the Geological Survey, 

 the latter * involving work he will not undertake again for the 

 price,' though he hoped for some readjustment for the sake of 

 a position he much liked. 



To Dr. Wallich 



June 12, 1850. 



Other expectations I have none but a wife to maintain, 

 and expensive appearances to keep up. 



As to writing a book of travels, or working up my 

 Geology, Physical Geography, or Meteorology — I have no 

 thoughts of it. 



Wealth I do not seek ; but it is absolutely necessary 

 that I be placed in unembarrassed circumstances to carry 

 out the Fl. Ant. and Flora Indica ; it were not expedient 



• that I should have even the Geological Survey Work. 

 Keputation is a very fine thing, and Botany a very 

 charming science, but neither will keep the pot boiling in 

 that land of constraint and restraint — England — where my 

 prospects are distraint for window-tax and poor-rates, if 



I the Woods and Forests will not give me a barn at Kew. 

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