xvi 



NOTICE OF WILLIAM GRIFFITH. 



Mussoorie, this I can do at a bad season. I shall afterwards be 

 able to compare the Himalayan chain at very distant points." 



Serampore, — 1841. 



" I will send you to-morrow dissections of Santalum if I can get 

 a small bottle for them : under \ inch lens you can easily open the 

 pistillum of Santalum having previously removed the perianth : it is a 

 concial body ; you must take care to get it out entire, especially at 

 the base, then place it in water, and dissect off the ovula of which 

 there are three or four, as per sketch. I shall not say what I see, as 

 I want to have your original opinion unbiassed, etc. ; but whenever 

 you see the tubes with filaments adhering to their apices, pray mark 

 attentively what takes place, both at the point and at the place where 

 the tube leaves the ovulum ; your matchless would do the thing. 

 Try iodine with all such, after having examined them in water. 



" Should you find any difficulty in dissecting away the ovula, 

 light pressure under glass will relieve you. I shall be very anxious 

 to know what your opinion is, particularly w r ith regard to the tubes 

 and all adhering filaments ; the question now occupying botanists 

 being this, is the embryo derived directly from the boyau or is it 

 derived from some parts of the ovulum ? 



" I hope you can understand these sketches." 



Peshawur : 13th December, 1839. 

 " What a shame it is that botanists should know nothing whatever 

 of the formation and structure of wood ! They look at a section of 

 a piece of oak, and imagine they have discovered the secret, and 

 write volumes on this imagination, yet they have been told over and 

 over again, that nothing is to be learnt on such subjects without 

 beginning at the commencement, which they are too idle to do. To 

 name an abominable Aster, is among them of much higher impor- 

 tance than to discover the cause of the growth of wood. Medullary 

 rays are most difficult, because they are very often deficient par- 

 ticularly in climbers. I am horridly idle, and yet what can I do 

 without books ; yet with regard to books, the more originality we 

 possess, the less we require them ? There is nothing to be got here 

 except a few marsh plants coming into flower. One beautiful Chara, 

 which might disclose the secret, had I good glasses, it is a most 

 graceful pellucid form : an undescribed duckweed, a floating Marchan- 

 tiacese. Would that I were settled with a Ross on one hand, and a 



