INDIA BOTANICALLY UNEXPLOEED 399 



Except perhaps Sikkim, no part of the Himalaya has been 

 systematically explored as far as Balsams are concerned, nor 

 will they be till European eyes are employed in the Survey, 

 as old Wight's and the Peninsular Missionaries' were nearly 

 a century ago. 



So, too, in an earlier letter to Captain Gage (July 12, 1906) : 



I do hope that this season will get us some Balsams from 

 unexplored territories, E. Burma especially. It is many 

 years since any new country in India has been botanically 

 opened up, and the contrast between India and China in 

 this respect is deplorable, especially as I am sure that many 

 of the new Chinese plants will be found in the E. Himal. 

 While India is lagging behind in exploring even accessible 

 regions by botanists, as the Katmandu Valley and Tenasserim, 

 or the Shan States, splendid collections are being made in the 

 Philippines — Australia is explored throughout and New 

 Zealand and E. and W. tropical Africa and Khodesia, and 

 New Guinea beginning. India lags behind or if anything is 

 done at all it is by ignorant natives, who do not give precise 

 habitats, or dates, or even colour of flowers, still less such 

 characters of growth as a botanist does. 



Your little exploration of Nimbo in Burma is in one sense 

 an exception, but was it possible to investigate a dry country 

 vegetation in the dry season ? 



Surely some effort should be made to obtain the means 

 of redeeming the credit of India which is monstrous low at 

 present. There is no more curious field of research in the 

 world than the passage from the Burmese to the Malay 

 Peninsula Flora, but it must be done by a botanist, not by 

 ignorant natives. 



Excuse my growl. I do love Indian Botany. I long to 

 see another Griffith. 



1 1 do love Indian Botany ! ' This is the keynote alike 

 of his strictures and his corresponding delight in any achieve- 

 ment, such as that of Burkill, whose fruitful enterprise in 

 1907 dispelled the myth of the inaccessibility of Nepal. This 

 it was that made him urge the co-ordination of effort, to 

 organise the training of collectors, to obtain reports from the 

 Forest Officers as to what botany had been done in their 



