BUBDBN OF ADMINISTKATIVE WOEK 245 



have no chance of tackling problems — I must grind away 

 at the Garden, the Bot. Mag., and Indian Flora, which I cannot 

 afford to give up, and Gen. Plant., which alone I delight in. 

 I am at Palms, a most difficult task, and sometimes weeks 

 elapse and not a stroke of work done ! I am getting very 

 weary of ' working for a living,' and am beginning to covet 

 rest and leisure in a way I never did before. But I must 

 first look out for the education of three sons, — all hopeful 

 I am glad to say, but one still an infant ! 



Have you read Paget 's Lecture 1 on plant diseases ? it 

 is very suggestive and a wonderful specimen of style aiding 

 in giving great importance to possibly very superficial 

 resemblances between animal and vegetable malformations. 

 Still there must be a great deal in the subject to be 

 investigated. 



Paget has started the idea of a Vegetable Pathologist for 

 Kew, and I have asked him to corkscrew Gladstone about it. 



To the Same 



June 12, 1881. 



I am groaning as usual, — now under the incubus of the 

 Sectional Presidency of the B.A. for York (Geography) 2 — 

 which I was ass enough to accept — because of Lubbock. 



Kew is becoming more toilsome than ever, and I can 

 rarely get an hour for ' Genera Plantarum,' for which I 

 have been doing the Palms for 16 months at least ; the 

 most difficult task I ever undertook. They are evidently 

 a very ancient group and much dislocated, structurally and 

 geographically. 



The Palms, with ' near 120 genera, many very imperfectly 

 known,' took over three years to finish : stigmatised again not 

 only as the most difficult job he ever undertook, but ' perhaps 

 the most unsatisfactory.' Indeed 'when the Gen. Plant, is 

 off my hands, I shall be a happy man — I hope.' 



To the Same 



June 18, 1881. 



I quite understand your misery at finding yourself where 

 you have ' all play ' offered you, and no work to fall back 



1 • Disease in Plants,' by Sir James Paget, See Gardeners' Chronicle, 1880, 



2 See ante, p. 223. 



