Gay, Jacques Etienne 



Rec. May 14 Ans. Aug. 25 



Paris, April 24, 1863 



My Dear Doctor, 



You complain about me and you are absolutely right as it is a shame that I did not 

 answer your last letter for such a long time. The letter of February 28, 1862 gave me 

 very valuable information and it also gave me évidence of your good friendship. It is true 

 that I could explain my long silence by very plausible reasons, but they would not justify 

 my fault and I would rather admit my guilt that engage in an insufficient défense. 



To start, many thanks for your information on the Panicum obtusum HBK. You will 

 agrée that it is for me nearly impossible to détermine through books because they do not 

 mention it, that it has very long with strong blades, 



In regards the Gramineas, I would like to tell you that I found both sexes in your 

 Buchloe dactyfoides in the Drummond collection III, under two différent numbers: # 

 359 femina and # 378, mascula. 



Let us now talk about the Isoetes that occupy my interest with great enthusiasm, 

 together with our friend from Berlin, Mr. Braun, from Bordeaux Mr. Durieu and Mr. 

 Cagliari in Sardinia. The latter published last year, in a scientific journal of Genoa, the 

 monograph of the Italian species divided into three genders! This, in parenthesis, 

 seemed to us to be totally absurd. Braun published the same year, 37 pages under the 

 title of "Two Types of German Isoetes" ( Isoetes lacustris and echinospora), with an 

 appendix where he described 7 new species: one from the East Indies, one from Japan 

 and five from South America. The previous year, 1861, I published "A Botanical 

 Excursion to the Aubrac and at Mount Dore". There I found many questions about the 

 Isoetes lacustris and echinospora and their morphology. Finally, Babington published 

 during that same year, 1863, a description with colored drawings of the English Isoetes 

 echinospora, that he and I picked together in the mountains of North Wales in August 

 1862. The publication was inciuded in the first édition of the new Botanical Journal that 

 Dr. Seerman directs in London. He mentions with regret, a fifth Isoitic opuscule, 

 illustrated for the author by Sir William Jackson Hooker, which is just as pitiable. It is in 

 the first portion of the Journal of British Ferns, in which two species of english Isoetes 

 (with the names of de lacustris and de Duriaei) are described and illustrated with a 

 gross ignorance of the morphology and synonymy that already had been described by 

 Babington. That is ail the information that Europe has in regards the Isoetes in the past 

 two years. Braun surely must have sent you "The Two Types of German Isoetes". If he 

 has not done this I could supply it to you but you would have to write to me about the 

 subject afterwards. At the same time I could also send you my short work of 1861, which 

 I have neglected to do before.ln regards to the north Amercan Isoetes, you know 

 through the great Elias Durant, that thanks to him we are now perfectly provided with the 

 two Pennsylvanian spécimen: the riparia and the Engelmanni. 



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