EEVOLUTION IN INDIAN BOTANY 471 



species because he has not uniting forms, though others say 

 they have, then there is an end of the matter. 



Ever yours affectionately, 



Jos. D. Hooker. 



Finally, in March, after showing how they are at cross 

 purposes in the matter, he concludes : 



The principles we should go on are to unite what nature 

 unites wherever she may have done so, and not to assume 

 that she ought to have done so elsewhere. However, as I 

 am sunk in the sink of creation of species by variation you 

 may do what you like with the Cardamine. 



So in February he tells Bentham : 



^ I have made sweeping reforms in the New Zealand Flora, 

 upon which I am quite hot and am egregiously pleased and 

 interested ; somehow I have taken greatly to working out 

 species and genera and examine a great deal more than I 

 used to. 



It was the same with the Introduction to the * Flora Indica' 

 by himself and Thomson. 



So complete a bouleversement of all former nomencla- 

 ture perhaps never occurred to any considerable Flora since 

 Liimaeus' Vegetable Kingdom. It has, however, been im- 

 possible to avoid doing battle with all our predecessors* 

 species, whose utter disregard of one another and of any 

 other part of the world's Flora but India has produced in- 

 extricable confusion in many cases. (To, Munro July 1853.) 



The said Introduction [he tells Bentham in 1853] is to 

 be a tremendous long essay on all things botanical in general 

 and Indian in particular ; we have taken up the subject of 

 Indian Bot. Geography in a comprehensive manner, and 

 have gone at great length into geographical divisions and 

 the collections and some works of our predecessors. Also 

 we have several pages on the study of systematic Botany in 

 general, and the use of Herbaria ; the prevalence of bad 

 species ; narrow prevalent ideas of variabihty and too much 

 stress laid on habit. In all this we do not expect you to 



