Churra [Cherrapunji]
Aug 25 [18]50
My dear father
I wrote to you by last Marseilles & acknowledged all your very kind letters received up to that time. Since then I have no particular news to relate. We have been quiet under the rain of Churra, & going on with our daily work as usual. Our collection goes on apace & we have now 13 Calami & 10 other Palms from these hills. I sent seeds of the Phoenix & Chamaerops Khassyana [khasiana] for Falconer to plant in Ward's Cases for you & to day I sent him ripe ones of Areca triandra for the same purpose. Soon I shall add Wallichia oblongifolia & two other Arecae now ripening. Such things generally come by fews & I have no Calami seeds ripe yet. The Plectocomia khassyana [khasiana] is very unlikely to be your Zalacca, either of Assam or Java. There

palms are very local & in foliage & habit quite alike. The hooked whips of the leaves are common to all the three genera, & when absent from the leaves are often present on the ragina[?] 20 ft long & more. I should not wonder if time were to turn out 100 species of Palms of this tribe with hooked whips. Now that I think of it let me tell you that nearly all these things climb & except you can give your ones a good India Rubber tree or the like to scramble up of (a post or beam will not do) you have not a chance of seeing them in their natural condition. The Plectocomia here is totally diff[eren]t from the Sikkim one, both climb lofty trees & have hooked whips many yards long. We got a specimen with old f[rui]t. the other day, but all seeds shed & no young plants or flower, it was perhaps 100 ft long very stout (as yours are) & we got it down with great difficulty. It appears to die

after flowering, the leaves are 20 ft long, pinna clothed with white tomentum below & having a very thickened edge. What with Jenkins & Simons collectors here --- 20 or 30 of Falconers, Lobb's, my friends L[ieutenan]ts Raban & Cave & Inglis friends, the roads are all becoming stripped like the Penang jungles & I assure you for miles it sometimes looks as if a gale had strewed the road with rotten branches & Orchideae. Falconer's men sent down 1000 baskets the other day & assuming150 at the outside as the number of species worth cultivating it stands to reason that your stoves in England will still be stocked. The only chance of novelty is in the deadly jungles of Assam Jyntea & the Garrows [Garos]. I am therefore not spending my money on Orchideae collecting but rather on Palms, Scitamineae &c which are more difficult to procure & not sought after by these plunderers. Oaks I will attend to but they are most troublesome as not one in a thousand is worth anything

An Arundina perhaps the common A. bambusifolia grows here 8 feet high. I have a stem so tall for Mus[eum]. just like a walking cane. The Rose climbs the loftiest forest trees like a Bauhinia with a trunk as thick as your leg I have live cuttings & a section of the wood. We obtained another Bamboo in flower the other day, the 5th in flower, a small species, probably Arundinaria. Ask Mr Brown if he has ever heard of a Viscum growing on a terrestrial Loranthus. I have a very curious Scitamines[?] with a one celled ovary, 1 parietal placenta[sic] & 3 or 4 ovules. We have also a fine scandent Loranthus, that ascends & descends rooting into the trunk as it goes. Balanophora is just peeping through the ground, a diff[eren]t species from any of the Sikkim ones. The vascular tissue is extremely curious & I hope by this one to finish my account of the genus. The seeds seem to attack the most minute rootlets of the stork in the first place, which goes on growing at the end of the first

year[,] the parasite is no bigger than a pin head & it takes many years to form a large tuber which flowers & dies generally the same year or is perennial. I have also been examining the parasitism of Aeginetia (on the Sacchara) of which we have several species, it appears essentially different from either Balanophora, Lathraea, or Euphrasia[?]. I have sought in vain to trace the roots of Gerardia Sopoubia[?] & Centranthera to any attachment, though I do not doubt their parasitism.
Thomson's collections went home in April by the "D[uke]. of Wellington" in 28 boxes. directed to the India house. One box contains his books, he gave the whole collection to the "India house" being unable to pay the carriage of his own private ones found previous to the Thibet mission to Calcutta [Kolkata]. If Gov[ernmen]t do not do something nothing can come of either Tom's [Thomas Thomson's] or my collections. They cannot ever be named without. The collection you will receive (I hope have received) "per Queen" will form at the

outside 1/4 of the bulk of which I shall have & we are now packing a much larger paper layer over layer of plants to suffocation -- how Bentham would storm I often think but we can neither afford paper nor room nor carriage, luckily they are beautifully dried & also large specimens but the separation will require great spare time & unremitted[?] labour. It is very easy to talk of a "Flora Indica" & Tom & I do talk to imbecility about it. But suppose the size paper brevity &c &c of DCs [De Candolle's], Prod[romus]. be adopted, it will take 12 vols, at least, & that without one word of English, or note on distribution particular habitats remarks on structure or ought else.
About 15 years of fair work would be necessary for I should not approve of any part being as poorly done as Decaisne's Asclep.[,] Choisys Convolv. Alphonse DCs. various papers orders & I further think that the plan[?] of distribution is carried to abuse.

Bentham is really the only first rate monographer. Neither Nees nor Boott shine in the Cyperaceae, nor the latter former in Acanthaceae if he has not improved much in DC. [De Candolle] Prod[romus]. which I have not seen. If Tom & I are to do the Fl[ora]. Ind[ica]. we ought I think to be expected to be able to do it all, or nearly all of course except Cryptogam. That the E.I.C. [East India Company] will not forward money to it you may rest assured, it may give Tom military allowance & will content him thereby -- it may also take copies, & thereby first--raise up, & then ruin a publisher by distributing copies to purchasers. Our Gov[ernmen]t may aid by giving me a small salary, or connecting me with Kew so that I have leisure to work, & thereby contenting clamorous me, but neither will it give a grant in any way proportionate to the work. What would £1000 be for a work the labor of which must stretch over 15 years? & I know they would never give both salary to me & money for the work. -- The question may be much simplified by resolving it into what is to become of my materials mss [manuscript] & collections on my return. I cannot undertake their

arrangement or still less publication less I am settled & if possible to obtain it, it seems far preferable to me to push for a house & small salary attached to the garden, now, 1) that Aitons house is empty; 2) that the magnitude of my collections demand accommodation; 3) that the money may be granted as a continuation of the allowance hitherto granted to a Serv[an]t. already in Service & who has done his best to give satisfaction. *1 They surely would not cast me off wholly on my return! though there is, on other grounds, an evident gravitation in that direction & surely it will be remembered that I have received noting hitherto in the shape of salary, & that every shilling is spent in collection & travelling.
*2 I do not much relish the idea of a Gov[ernmen]t grant towards publication which may only leave us as much in the lurch[?] as that for Fl[ora]. Antarct[ica]. did & in the contingency of Fitch being unavailable what a predicament am I in then? *3 There are of course difficulties in the way I cannot forsee, but my plans are not so far arranged, that it is time to begin. I shall be home I expect in April or May &

advertise the continuation of Fl[ora]. Antarct[ica]. at once, push for my Admiralty full pay & arrange about my Geol[ogical] Survey. Should the Gov[ernmen]t ignore my collections there is an end of that matter, & there must be till the public make a din & the pressure from without is too strong -- the utmost you can then hope for is that the E.I.C. [East India Company] will take Tom up. When he will undertake my herb[arium]. with his own. As to any application for me to E.I.C [East India Company] it would only stand in Tom's way at present & frighten them. His course is very clear, He will leave India in debt wholly through & owing to his scientific exertions for he has never spent a penny in any extravagance, not even in any indulgence. If therefore the E.I.C. [East India Company] do nothing for him he returns to India in 6 months after landing in England which is his wisest & best course, for 7 years more, when he retires on a competency.
So long as Reeve will pay £2 or £4 for such plates as the Rhodod[endron] book it is far better that he should do so that that Gov[ernmen]t should give it & Reeve nothing – & moreover if Gov[ernmen]t give it & any accident happens to Fitch as I said before I am ruined. We never could get the Fl[ora]. Ant[arctica].

plates done except by Fitch at £2 a piece & if he fails us I am still bound to produce 400 plates at that rate come what may. The Admiralty you know give me a salary & a grant, & the W.& F.[Woods & Forests] or whatever body I may be expected to publish under, cannot do less. The salary is of far more importance to me than the grant as without it there are no prospects of my working up even my journals. For such books as the Rhod[odendron]. & continuation thereof I grudge neither the plates nor the little trouble required to draw up the descriptions but for any thing involving the labor of publishing my journal, systematic works on Botany & Scientific results of all kinds, I must be placed in independence at least before I can begin. I feel already very much like old Burchell & should not be the least surprised if stimulus is withheld to lapse into his condition as far as my materials are concerned.
No news about Lobb
Best love to all | Your ever affectionate son | Jos D Hooker [signature]