EEVOLUTION IN INDIAN BOTANY 471 
species because he has not uniting forms, though others say 
they have, then there is an end of the matter. 
Ever yours affectionately, 
Jos. D. Hooker. 
Finally, in March, after showing how they are at cross 
purposes in the matter, he concludes : 
The principles we should go on are to unite what nature 
unites ivherever she may have done so, and not to assume 
that she ought to have done so elsewhere. How^ever, as I 
am sunk in the sink of creation of species by variation you 
may do what you like with the Cardamine. 
So in February he tells Bentham : 
I have made sweeping reforms in the New Zealand Flora, 
upon which I am quite hot and am egregiously pleased and 
interested ; somehow I have taken greatly to working out 
species and genera and examine a great deal more than I 
used to. 
It was the same with the Introduction to the ' Flora Indica' 
by himself and Thomson. 
So complete a bouleversement of all former nomencla- 
ture perhaps never occurred to any considerable Flora since 
Linnaeus' Vegetable Kingdom. It has, however, been im- 
possible to avoid doing battle with all our predecessors' 
species, whose utter disregard of one another and of any 
other part of the world's Flora but India has produced in- 
extricable confusion in many cases. (To, Munro July 1853.) 
The said Introduction [he tells Bentham in 1853] is to 
be a tremendous long essay on all things botanical in general 
and Indian in particular ; we have taken up the subject of 
Indian Bot. Geography in a comprehensive manner, and 
have gone at great length into geographical divisions and 
the collections and some works of our predecessors. Also 
we have several pages on the study of systematic Botany in 
general, and the use of Herbaria ; the prevalence of bad 
species ; narrow prevalent ideas of variability and too much 
stress laid on habit. In all this we do not expect you to 
