Sept[ember] 29/[18]98
The Camp. Sunningdale
My dear Prain
I have just received the batch of Impatiens announced in yours of Aug[ust] 29. It contains a lot of splendid specimens from Sikkim & elsewhere, but none of the tall Lachong species -- which I suppose to be Wallich's I. sulcata. A noble specimen of which I take to be the same is now flowering in my Garden, 5 feet high, a regular pyramid of leafy branches each truncated with a panicle of flowers. The capsule is clavate, quite like Royleana, -- there is unhappily none[?]

of these species[?] & their allies in Fl. Brit Ind., from my judging 3[?] immature fruits. I have now yours of Sept[ember] 5 to thank you for[.] I shall be very glad to see I. insignis as named by Hamilton -I cannot understand it´s being confounded with I. Balsamina, for which "Index Kewensis" is not, as you suppose it to be, responsible -- it stands as a species in that work. As to I. racemosa, I can there see 4 of that name in Index Kewensis. 3 referred to insignis, racemosa & leptoceras & one, that of DC.[?] stands. The whole matter will have to be worked up of course -- I shall be very glad to see the Javan & Chinese species & shall keep sketches of those we have not.

You are right in engaging collectors to confine[?] themselves to deficient[?] genera, & could not make a better beginning than with Impatiens & Balsams Didymocarpus[?] amongst herbaceous things, but do please see that flowers are at once placed in a pocketbook of bibulous paper, to be placed with the specimens when dried. King*1 is at Kew at last, staying with Clarke, I saw him yesterday, looking & feeling remarkably well, but not over strong. He is working at odds & ends for you, & is coming here in a week or so after seeing his son off for the Cape -- who had a short leave to go home & see his father. I am still worrying over Ceylon Grasses, cogitating[?] over Stapf's*2 views of the Tribes as now being printed in Flora Capensis. Stapf is certainly a

first-rate Botanist & is getting to the bottom of grasses, but treat them as you will they do not lend themselves to any but a complicated system of Tribes. I still cling to Paniceae & Poaceae [now called the Gramineae] as leading characters of the first impatians: he takes the spikelets articulate or not as his leading divisions. Ever sincerely yours | Jos. D. Hooker [signature] I have gone through the botany of the Kashian[?] Hills, & your essay on it with great interest, it is very instructive.