The late Secretary (1888-1920) asks you as a personal 

 favour to read the following letter sympathetically: — 



Royal Horticultural Society, 

 Vincent Square, 



Westminster, s.w. i. 



July, 192c. 



To all the Fellows of the Society, 



Now that they have released me from the responsi- 

 bilities of the Secretary's office, which have rested upon 

 me for the last thirty-two years, the President and 

 Council have asked me to assist them by endeavouring 

 to raise funds for the completion and publication of 

 " The New Pritzel " which is now well on its way. 



" Pritzel's Index " is an absolute necessity to all 

 who are interested in, or engaged upon, any of the 

 higher branches of horticultural and gardening know- 

 ledge or investigation. It is, in effect, an index to all 

 the illustrations of the botanically-identified flowering 

 plants and ferns of the whole world, so that any garden- 

 lover, or horticultural or botanical student, wishing to 

 verify a plant name, or to ascertain what any particu- 

 lar plant is like, has only to turn to its name in Pritzel 

 and Pritzel tells him immediately where he can find 

 an illustration and description of the plant he seeks. 



You can at once see, therefore, how all-important 

 it is for Pritzel's Index to be accurate, exact, complete, 

 and up-to-date, and when I tell you that the original 

 Pritzel was published in 1866, you will recognize that 

 in undertaking to re-issue this work and to bring it 

 up-to-date, the Society is not setting its hand to a work 

 which might well have been allowed to stand over for 



