296 EETIREMENT, TO 1897 : BOTANICAL WORK 



leaves are protean and repetitive and that in the fossil yot 

 have neither insertion, stipulation, surface, texture, verna- 

 tion or colour to check you in your headlong course at identi- 

 fication. Lastly sweep up the floor of a Herbarium, aftei 

 a good case of rejecting bad specimens from a heap of plants 

 and see what a fossil botanist would make of the disjecta 

 membra ! 



He was much interested about this time in his frienc 

 Huxley's excursion into practical botany. The latter, seeking 

 health in long summer visits to Arolla and the Engadine, begar 

 to study the structure, life-history, and affinities of the Alpine 

 gentians, and went on to investigate the gentians of the whok 

 world in order to make out their evolutionary affinities anc 

 distribution. Indeed his devotion to the gentians led thr 

 Bishop of Chichester, who was staying at Arolla, to declare 

 that he sought the ' Urgentian ' as a kind of Holy Grail. 



He seemed to find that the distribution of the gentians 

 corresponded very closely with that of the Crayfishes, on which 

 he had written a well-known monograph. But Hooker doubtec 

 any general identity between zoological and botanical regions 



Athenaeum Club : Feb. 25, 1887. 



Dear Huxley, — I have finished the Gentians, and hav 

 been much instructed by the first part and interested in 

 the last. The junction of your fine with Mueller's and both 

 running into the same terminus is the ' bright particular 

 point in it. 



As to the Taxonomic part, Gentiana is one of many 

 old genera founded on a few heterogeneous materials, the 

 result of which is, that for years it is not only not reformed 

 but all sorts of things are added to it — it takes 7 devils 

 worse than the first. I found Palms in the same condition 

 when I worked up the genera for Gen. Plant. Areca was 

 the equivalent of Gentiana. 



I am very uneasy about your Zoological views : none 

 previously prepared will do for plants — and you will not 

 help us. I have left your MSS. at the AthenaBum. 



Sunningdale : March 14, 1887. 



Dear H., — Awfully sorry; — my fingers got vilely cramped. 

 The last allusion was to your Geographical distribution 



: 



