280 RETIREMENT, TO 1897 : BOTANICAL WORK 



their uses, physiognomies and distribution, should be 

 taught : — a knowledge of plants, in short, as well as of their 

 1 innards ' and movements. 



To F. Darwin 



September 9, 1894. 



I am glad you are going to teach the Medicos a little 

 practical Botany. It is lamentable to find that all this 

 botanical teaching of the greatest Universities in England 

 and Scotland does not turn out a single man who can turn 

 his botanical knowledge to any use whatever to his fellow 

 creatures. Where should we be if Medicine, Law, or any 

 other pursuit were taught after that fashion ? 



All through 1887 the Indian Euphorbias were ' on his brain.' 

 He struggled with the confusion of species under one or more 

 names in the Wallich Herbarium. Bentham, who distributed 

 the plants after Wallich returned to India, ' had evidently not 

 as yet got his Botanical Optics.' The work was most distract- 

 ing in the genera with microscopic flowers, one of which he had 

 on the table for two months. He tells Asa Gray (March 8) 

 that he has kept Baccaurea for a bonne bouche. ' The pile of 

 specimens is quite 5 ft. high ; it goes on growing by speci- 

 mens thrown out of other genera. I suppose that no genus 

 of Phaenogams is so little known, not even Calamus ! ' Still 

 he confesses : * The more I see of Bent ham's work on the 

 Euphorbs. in Gen. Plant., the more I am lost in " wonder, love 

 and awe." ' (January 7.) 



It was November before he could record that he was print- 

 ing the last sheet of the Euphorbiaceae, just eighteen months' 

 work. But even then, 



The next part will hardly take all in. I am getting od 

 with the Urticeae, and making a list of the Monocots, so 

 as to see how I am to get all in. Two-thirds of my synonymy 

 and citations are perfectly useless, but King, Thomson and 

 others thought I should make a sweep up of all, so that 

 Indian Departmental Floras need not do so. 



From time to time during the progress of the work, he con- 

 tributed descriptions of new and rare species to the Icones 



