Hooker, Sir Joseph Dalton
JHC1052
The Camp, Sunningdale, Berkshire, United Kingdom
PRAIN LETTERS PRA f.178
Prain, Sir David
The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
9-10-1902
© Descendants of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker
Letters to D. Prain
The Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
English
Original MS
4 page letter over 1 folio
 
Transcript


[illeg.] 1902
THE CAMP. SUNNINGDALE.
My dear Prain I should earlier have acknowledged the receipt of the munificent supply of cigars, which I received a fortnight ago, & I thank you heartily for your kindly having procured & forwarded them. They are excellent. The sketch of my father's life & work has kept me very busy for many months. It is now, all but completed, & in Balfour´s*1 hands. It has been a very difficult task, & I am in great doubts -- about its reception, especially of the appendices on his labour, & an attempt to classify the principal articles (with the exception of the purely[?]

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[illeg.] 1902
THE CAMP. SUNNINGDALE.
My dear Prain I should earlier have acknowledged the receipt of the munificent supply of cigars, which I received a fortnight ago, & I thank you heartily for your kindly having procured & forwarded them. They are excellent. The sketch of my father's life & work has kept me very busy for many months. It is now, all but completed, & in Balfour´s*1 hands. It has been a very difficult task, & I am in great doubts -- about its reception, especially of the appendices on his labour, & an attempt to classify the principal articles (with the exception of the purely[?]

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systematic, which have been embodied in recent works[?].). This includes notices & reviews of innumerable works, the letters from travellers &collectors, & the innumerable articles upon economic plants, obituary éloges*2, & the likes. The titles of the several journals are confusing, & the indices to the volumes with 2 or 3 exceptions all but useless. The Editorship of the unexampled[?] amounts of botanical matter that he accumulated would have taxed the time & brains of half a dozen Eh Editors, & he conducted it without even a secretary! His only object being the advance of Botanical knowledge. A more disinterested man never lived. It is to come out with the new year, as a part of the Annals. I have been three times, page by page, through all the journals,

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checking my references, & shall recheck them all in proof. King*3 has shown me your sheets of the Bengal flora, & I am delighted to see them. I have but one observation to make;-- I should have put a star to the introduced species, or used a different type for them. I hear nothing of the my sketch of the Flora of India being printed. King has gone over it with me, & is I think satisfied. Soon I hope to be again at Impatiens but I must first get ahead with Bot. Mag., which “drags a lengthening chain" & with the abnormal increase of botanical publications, especially transactions & Journals from all parts of the world, makes the determination of species more & more laborious. There ought to be some check to this issue of new periodicals, many of which are padded, for want of better material, with crude[?] matter.

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Is it possible for me to procure covers for the Vol. viii of the Annals. I received all the letter press & plates before the issue of the volumes -- that is without the covers. If there is the smallest difficulty please say so. Lady Hooker had good news of Mrs Prain the other day, & she desires[?] her best regards[.] Ever sincerely yours | Jos.D Hooker [signature] King is well & hard at work; he tells me of the Gov[ernmen]ts arrangement for the promotion of Economic Work! It is absurd, & it must be quietly[?] met by a determination to ignore its provisions, & meet to do nothing[?]. It is a case of red tape "in Excelsis".

ENDNOTES

1. Presumably a reference to Isaac Bayley Balfour (1853 --1922). British botanist, son of botanist John Hutton Balfour. In 1888 he became Professor of Botany at the University of Edinburgh. 2. éloges is the French word for eulogy. 3. Sir George King (1840 --1909), superintendent of the Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta 1871 -- 1898 and the first Director of the Botanical Survey of India 1891-1898. In 1898 King was succeeded at the Calcutta Botanical Gardens by Sir David Prain.
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