Dr. E. Purkinje 



Weisswasswe, February 9 t l88l 



Dear Sir: 



I am longingly awaiting your bountiful shipment and would anyway not have written 

 before it arrived, if this letter should not accompany a ventured shipment of fresh 

 Omorica branches packed in moist moss, regarding the arrival of which I ask that you 

 soon advise me, with a description of its condition. Now as I send them they are 

 completely fresh and green, the needles adhere tightly, only the cones have e become 

 darl<because I had the branches laying in thinned glycerine in order to fresh/ them up. 

 Namely they arrived in very withered condition because they were left laying for 1k 

 days in a custom-house. If they had been enroute only one week from the Southeast 

 Serbian border to North Bohemia, which can be done very easily, instead of 3 weeks, 

 then it would not be so difficult to send fresh branches to America and likewise from 

 all parts of Americai fresh flowering branches of conifers to here. Yesterday I received 

 from Görz (Sud Krain) blooming branches of Sequoia sempervirens and Thuja gigantea 

 (both, here where I had them in the open through 6-7 years, perished last winter) in 

 fresh condition. The male flowers of Sequoia surprised me because they deviate very 

 much from Taxodium distichum and justify an individual genus. 



The increasing trade will make the shipping of fresh vegetables more and more easy. 

 Besides if one sends the things in glycerine they will keep for years and it is a matter 

 of voluminous packing and higher transportation. If only the botanist himself could 

 travel from place to place as fast as his letters. Recently I received from India a 

 fine and 2-needled pine which the writer of the forestry tree-flora of India, Dr. Brandis, 

 declares identical with P. Merkusii . It is the same which Hooker called P. Khasia and 

 which previously was considered as Sinensis (signified the same with the genuine P. 

 Massoniana ) . I have not yet carefully examined the matter but do believe that he is 

 right. However, there does also exist a 3 needled pine beside the longifolia in 

 Himalaya, which Brandis calls P. Khasia . Of this I have no reliable material up to now, 

 even though I have seen it under a false designation and examined it. If one could only 

 also have wood, etc. 



Have you studied California cypresses? Did you bring along ripe acorns from 

 California and Oregon, for cultivation of these varieties not at all found in culture 

 yet? I always have the urge sometime to ask you for Information about something 

 which does not bear cones, but I hesitate doing so. Namely I would like to know upon 

 what the revolution was based which forced you to leave Frankfurt. At that time the 

 matter was taken very seriausly by the authorities. Later on Heine made fun of the 

 turmoil about the constable-guard. I cannot imagine that people like you, even though 

 young at the time, would undertake something that did not make sense. Börne may have 



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