* * * *
Cabul: September 26th, 1840.
"I despatch to-morrow the first of the bits of wood, the duplicates will be sent on the 28th or 29th: on this latter day I leave for Peshawur, and right glad am I that the time has come at last. I will send you the same woods from Peshawur, but shall scarcely be able to send you pomegranate from any thing like a cold place.
"On receiving your specimens of vine, the following question occurred to me. If wood is a deposit from the leaves or fibres sent down from the leaves, how is the presence of wood to be accounted for in tendrils, which have no leaves, but yet which are evidently branches? The theory of the formation of wood, which considers it as above, is deemed ingenious, but it will not I think be found to be true. The bark evidently has a great deal to say to the matter.
"I shall be most rejoiced at a remote prospect of again setting to work. I take no interest now in the vegetation of this country. I hope to be at Loodianah early in November; my present intention is to run up to Simla, thence to Mussoorie, and descend on Seharunpore. If I do this, I shall only leave one point unfinished, and that is the Hindoo-koosh Proper, where however I shall have the advantage of Major Sanders of the Engineers, who will pick up a few plants for me. I wish much to take notes of the vegetation about Simla and 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 ½ 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 1/1500 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 with 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 importance than to discover the cause of the growth of wood. Medullary rays are most difficult, because they are very often deficient particularly 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 Marchantiaceæ. Would that I was settled with a Ross on one hand, and a Strongstein on the other, around my collections with good health and good spirits. Tell ---- I have in view the division of the vegetable kingdom analagous to radiata, they include all the Marchantiaceæ, and are, to all intents and purposes, Vegetable Radiata."
* * * * *
Pushut, 1st march beyond Kooner: January 29th, 1840.
"This will be a letter of odds and ends, you know I was to return to Jallalabad; well I reached that place, but left the encampment and crossed the river, where an advance road making partly for the Kooner expedition were employed, and having originally determined on going to Kooner, I accompanied them two marches, when they were overtaken by the army, to avoid which, I halted one day, and on the next proceeded onwards by the north bank of the river, thus saving all the fords of this horrid river. I should call it beautiful at any other season. The road was bad, and the last one and a half mile into camp most difficult, the path winding round and over spurs of sharp limestone rocks which must have had abundance of silex in them they were so very hard. At the very worst part, my headman being in front, all of a sudden I heard three shots in quick succession with the usual hallooing, and then I was called on in advance, meeting my headman wounded: he has lost the two fore-fingers of his right hand. All I saw was three men scrambling up the face of the hill, on whom I opened a fire as soon as my guns came up, and had the pleasure of hitting one on the shield.
"Such a scene ensued! for when there are three or four on such occasions we may reasonably expect thirty or forty, and my object was to get out of the bad road, and so be close to camp. Some of, or rather all, my people became dismayed, I had therefore to cheer, to point my double barrels, and in fact to enact a whole legion. One fellow tried to shoot me but his powder proved faithful, the others were wounded: however they kept in sight, and to make matters worse, in one place within twenty yards, six or seven of my loads were thrown; evening drawing on, and prospects disgusting, when at last having passed over one bad part and got down into a ravine, a number of people were seen closing down on us, but my man had run off to camp, and by shouts succeeded in calling five or six sepahis, part of the rear-guard, to our relief, and so we escaped bag and baggage, the rascals making off when the red coats appeared. I was sick at heart at the loss of poor Abdool Rozak's fingers: he is an Arab with an English heart, bearing his loss most manfully, and when his fingers were removed expressed anxiety alone about me and my Sundoogs (collections). Well then, where should I have been had I been assailed as Abdool Rozak was, I should have been unprepared, and if riding, my mare would certainly have jumped into the river beneath. Thomson {0a} said when he left me, G---, you are rash and Abdool Rozak is rash, take care or you will get into trouble. My moving about without a guard was imprudent, and I now return to Jallalabad to get one, or if not successful to wait there until the spring and its floral excitements call me out: what I dislike is danger without any recompense, not a flower is to be had; with excitement it is nothing. I have now had two escapes, one from the buffalo in Assam, and this, which is a greater one, because had not the army been delayed by accident at the ford, it would have been eight or ten miles in advance, and consequently there would have been no rear-guard at hand.
"The country is disturbed, and one can only stir out in the valley itself close to camp, which is the more tantalizing as the mountains are accessible, and covered with forest. Our halt here should put us in possession of much information respecting these forests. As it is, I shall leave probably as wise as I came, except in having ascertained that the change from the well-wooded Himalaya mountains to those of the Hindoo-koosh, without even a shrub five feet high, takes place to the east of this. My employment is surveying and collecting data for ascertaining the heights of the hills around. But wherever I turn, the question suggests itself, what business have I here collecting plants, with so many in Calcutta demanding attention? How I am living! alone, without a table, chair, wine, or spirits, with a miserable beard, and in native clothes! but one thus saves much time; how unfortunate that mine now is not worth saving!
"I have been reading Swainson's volumes in Lardner's Cyclopædia, in which there is a little to which severe critics may object, but a vast deal more that is beautifully sound. I am quite certain I never appreciated them before. How wonderful that no one before Macleay and Swainson thought that living beings were created on one plan. I have imbibed all the important parts with the hope of bringing them to bear on Botany, which is in a shameful state. One talks of the typical nature of polypetalous or monopetalous plants; another ridicules the idea, because as he wisely says, some polypetalous plants are monopetalous, and vice versa!! he objects, in fact to what constitutes the great value of a character, its mode of variation. All Swainson's propositions appear to me philosophical and highly probable, but none of the present generation have eyes young enough to bear such a flood of light as he has thrown upon them. There are faults I acknowledge, but a man who writes for money does not always write for fame; rapid writing and much more rapid publishing is a vast evil, but one which is too often unavoidable. I have four or five drawings of fish, one of the spotted carnivorous carp, the most carnivorous type of all except Opsarion, and perhaps a new subgenus; {0b} one of the Sir-i-Chushme and Khyber Oreinus, and a Perilamp with two long cirrhi on the upper lip. I intend...
