Ree,. Oct. 26,1876 Weisswasser, Bohemia, Austria 



Ans..Äpr. 8,X8?8 September 13, 18?6 



Most Honored Sir ! 



I T thank you very much f or . your dissertaion about the oaks..Uh- 



f otunately I have not been so lucky^ to see a north american % t 



virens r alive, and also I saw none in the her bar iuur, be cause, when IT 



last visited the Vienna herbariunr; I dug only btterough the west±- 



asian'of Kotschy* But I do know the illustrations by Liebmann, ,which 



we posess,and, for this reason,these species are most interesting to 



nie.. Should not one or the other be really identical to the europaeair.. 



The east-american^ are similar to those appearing in tertiary layers irr 



Europe, thou^h not identical with thenu The west-american belong though: 



definitely to the Continental flora, which spread: from Asia during the 



diluvian times into Europe. The mexican I 1 have seen earlier in herba- 



ria,and, some of them in *gr eenhouses-, The raany illustrated by Lieb- 



mararhave in part the characteri stics of the Eryt hrohalonos , and are pro- 



bably also tertiaryr Some, put into the Prinos, such as insigni s , how- 



ever diverge definitely in their texture, but I am not paleonthologi st 

 from 



enough to say, fcs which f ormation- they originate. I am a f ollower og 

 your compatriot Volger and consider all species as eternal from the 

 past» 



" With the american species, which you mentiorr besides many,, 

 which I do not know properlyvbecause I have not seen them in well de- 

 fined speeimens,, is one species, which was specially striking.. In 

 Europaean gardens there is an oak assumedly Coming from America, un - 

 der the name £. Castanea or montieola » which in books (e.g. by C. Koch) 

 is often associated with Prinos, but, which judging from the buds, 

 has absolutely no similarity with any american oak-, but resembles all- 

 together a Robur , from which alba and macrocarpa differ significant- 

 ly, , which otherwise are still similar to the species of the Robur 

 gr&p. 



