TELEGRAMS,
WINDLESHAM. April 28 1910 THE CAMP,
NEAR SUNNINGDALE. My dear Ridley*1
I have just received & twice read the most interesting & instructive account of your [1 word illeg.] trip, & the most important data you have obtained respecting the vegetation of the Malayan & Siamese borderland. Your communication arrived at a very opportune moment for I was actually in the middle of Swettenhams's "British Malaya", a capital work in its own way but utterly dead to Natural history.
There is much repetition in it, especially of optimistic passages, & eulogies as to some of which he is

himself rather too much in front.
Your finding I. mirabilis in [1 word illeg.] hills in the interior is very interesting.
It is to be hoped that your Geological Survey will soon visit [1 word illeg.]. I am sorry that the 2 species of Impatiens were lost. Your collectors should be bound to carry a portfolio however small as part of their equipment.
We have now got [1 word crossed out, illeg.] half a dozen Siam species of Balsam, all different from the Malayan, but one identical with a [1 word illeg.] species.
Yesterday, Sunday, Dr[?] Stapp[?] spent with us, bringing a Japanese botanist,

Dr Hayata who is engaged on a Flora of Formosa, on which island he tells me there is no endemic[?] genus but a conifer & only one Impatiens a very small Chinese form, but specifically distinct.
I am now at work on a small collection of Chinese Balsams made by Wilson[?] during his 2d journey, which was financed by Sargent of the Arnold Arboretum who sends me the Balsams for Kew. Almost all are large flowered & most difficult of analysis & new to me.
I now have catalogued about 180 Chinese species & described most in detail & see no prospect of publishing them, but may a [1 word illeg.] or Epitome which I have completed or nearly.
Ever most sincerely y[our]s | Jos. D. Hooker[signature]
K.O.

May 2. Your "Flora of the [1 word illeg.] Valleys" has just arrived. It is very instructive. I should have added [1 word illeg.] to the title of the paper -- not 1 botanist in 100 has an atlas that will tell them where [1 word illeg.] & Batang[?] Padang are.
Endnotes
1. Henry Nicholas Ridley (1855--1956). English botanist, geologist and naturalist who spent much of his life in Singapore, where he was the first Scientific Director in charge of botanical gardens. In this role he introduced rubber as a commercial product to Malaysia & improved the method of tapping. He explored widely around Penang & Malacca. He retired to England in 1911 and worked on a five volume flora of the Malay Peninsula, published from 1922 to 1925. In 1930 he published a seminal work on plant dispersal: The Dispersal of Plants Throughout the World.