Dec[embe]r 8 1902
THE CAMP. SUNNINGDALE.
My dear Prain Very many thanks for sending me the Portfolio covers, which have arrived safely: & far more for your kindness to my boy of which he speaks most gratefully. Please accept also his mother´s warm gratitude. I do wish that he would take up some branch of knowledge. I have had Gamble*1 here for the last week. He is a delightful guest. His finest book is out at last & I am urging him to take up a review of the Madras Flora: even a list of the known species with their general distribution would be a great help. He is doing some good work in preparing

the materials for King´s*2 Malayan work. The latter has been really for him exceedingly well, & the weather continuing mild, he was enabled to stay on till after the middle of Nov[ember]. He is now safe I hope in the Riviera. I am just informed of an accession[?] to Straits Botanists -- Mr Stephen Langton by name, of the Straits Civil Service residing at Bewles Kuala Selangor. I have written encouraging him, & introduced him by letter to Ridley, I shall ask King if he can spare him a copy of the Magazine Materials. With regard to the Phoenix robusta -- from what you tell me it is hardly worth sending home, except indeed it has flowers or fruit on it. I am urging Cooke*3 to get whole specimens of the Phoenix mentioned by Woodrow as robusta in his "Notes on a Journey from Poona to Nagotna"*4 p.p. 94 & 97. It is really nothing short of a scandal that

the Phoenix palms of India have been so long neglected – Gammie*5 tells me of a probably undescribed species in the Shuwasi[?] Hills -- surely Forest officers could be induced to send to Calcutta, whole specimens of the Phoenices[?] of these districts. Gov[ernmen]t should issue an order to that effect. Also there should be no difficulty in getting photographs of them -- I suppose every Forest Officer has a Kodiak. There must be a dozen species at least in India. Duthie*6 writes in dire distress about the removal of the Saharanpur Herbarium to Dehra. Talking it over with Gamble I think it would not be a bad move, & I have suggested that the "Economic[?] Board" be moved to veto it. -- It would be a good beginning for it, & might be carried out before said "Board" splits leaks & goes to the bottom as a corporate body with all souls lost. I am thinking of reducing my essay on the India Flora to the 20 or 30 pages asked for & giving the whole affair to the Linnaean with

perhaps additions. In the Gazetteer it will certainly be lost to the public, & I suspect that the editor will take exception to including Ceylon[?] & the Straits settlements. The per contra to[?] this course is, that I doubt the whole affair being worth the pages of the Linnean. The sketch of my father´s life is off my hands*7. There are just 200 pages of it -- you shall have 1[?]of the very first copies I get for distribution. It has the merit or demerit of originality of treatment as a whole. Ever my dear Prain | sincerely yours | Jos D Hooker[signature] Many happy Xmases[?] -- Did it even occur to you how curious it is, that Vaccinium should[?] abound in the Eastern Himalaya & be absolutely 0[stet] in the West. though the order is both European & N[orth] asiatic only bic[?] H. &. F. [illeg.] of Chinese plants & these not[?] the epiphytic[?] species so common in E. Himal[aya].