Dr. E. Purkinje* 



Weisswasser in Bohemia, Aug. 18, 1879 ? 



Dear Sir: 



Your letter pleased me very much. I gave no sign of life of myself because 

 throughout the whole year I could not comply with your intentions. Last year I was 

 requested to establieh a network of rain-observation stations in Bohemia and I had to 

 comply with the request of our immediate authorities and, as you can see on the list 

 being sent herewith, I brought together the considerable number of 690 stations (now 

 already 700) in one year, whereby I had to request the Forest estates to buy the 

 instruments, request the forest rangers to make the observations, and finally to 

 request both to purchase the Observation reports, in order that the undertaking, for 

 which our school furnishes the money, does not remain passive, You can imagine how 

 much time is absorbed by the correspondence, the compilation of the Observation 

 reports sent in and you will understand that, since I daily have 3-5 hours of Instruc- 

 tion, demonstrations at the microscope or in the garden and excursions, finally also 

 much work in the garden and the collections, for this year I could not really think 

 of botany, nor to think of doing any work in it. 



More than a year ago you wrote quite angrily that I deceived your confidence 

 and did not use the rieh material to shed light on the dark species and since this 

 year I could do even less than previously, I antieipated with sorrow your complete 

 displeasure. Therefore, your card pleased me very much. That the printed lettering 

 was most interesting to me, I need not write. There is so much in it about cones, 

 growth etc., about pines with which I am only incompletely familiär, furthermore 

 about other kinds of oaks, etc., which very much impedes me and makes me regret 

 that I cannot have the complete work from the Ranunculus on. 



The herb flora of western America is so much old-worldly and different from 

 the eastern American, that here even more distinctly than in the few kinds of far-reach- 

 ing tree flora (which finally includes much European and East-Asian) an earlier 

 connection with the gerontological continent can be surmised, yes" must, whose 

 greatest part sank in the Pacific, while another large part, middle Asia, which 

 became the cradle of our Aryan strain since the raising of the Himalayan rain-poor, 

 almost Vegetation less desert. Definitely in America:, with these gerontological 

 flora remainders, border not only the quite separat ed flora of the Eastern States, 

 which in the tertiary period in Europe lived from England to the Urals and also, 

 as long as the present Atlantic ^cean was a continent, included larger trees, but 

 certainly there also existed, before the land bordered with the Atlantic flora 

 and those with gerontological flora in America, lands with peculiar flora and 

 fauna and this is also represented in the Southwest in California, Arizona, 



