NEEDFUL AID FOE PUBLICATION 341 
Our Government may assist by granting me a small salary, 
or connecting me with Kew, so that I may have leisure 
to work, and thus it may stop my clamorous mouth ; but 
neither our Government nor the E. India Company will 
give a sum, in any way proportioned to the v/ork. What 
would a thousand pounds be, for a job, the labour of which 
must stretch over fifteen years ? And I trow they will 
never award hoih a salary to me, and moTiey for the work. 
The question may be simplified by merely asking what 
is to become of my materials, MSS., and collections, on 
my return ? I cannot undertake their arrangement, much 
less their publication, unless I am settled. If it be at all 
practicable, I desire to push for a house and small salary, 
attached to the Garden, and at once, because (firstly) Mr. 
Alton's is now vacant, and (secondly) because the magnitude 
of my collections requires to be considered and accom- 
modated. (Thirdly) because the money might now be 
granted as the continuance of an allowance hitherto enjoyed 
by a man, already in the service of the Government, and 
who has done his utmost to please his employers. They 
surely could never cast me wholly off, on my return ? — 
(Still, there seems on other grounds an evident leaning 
that way) — But it must be sm-ely remembered that I have 
hitherto received nothing in the shape of salary, and that 
every shilling has been spent in collecting and on travelling 
expenses. I do not much relish the idea of a Government 
Grant towards the cost of pubhcation. It might only leave 
us in the lurch, as was the case with the Flora Antarctica. 
And supposing that Fitch's services should be no longer 
available — ^what sort of a predicam^ent should I be in then ? 
The Admiralty, as you are aware, give me a salary and 
a grant, and the Woods and Forests, or whatever body may 
employ me, cannot (I should hope) do less. A salary would 
be far better for me than a grant as enabling me to work up 
my Journals ; they cannot otherwise be given to the world. 
For such books as the work on Bhododendrons and its con- 
tinuation, I shall grudge neither the plates nor the little 
trouble requisite to draw up the descriptions. But when 
such work is involved as the laborious publication of my 
Jom^nals, of a systematic botanical work, — or of the scientific 
results of various kinds, arising from my travels, I must 
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