2 Business to Undertake. and Neglected More Than Ever What I Ought to Do

[[1]]

Royal Gardens Kew

July 20/[18]74

Dear [Asa] Gray

You may indeed be vexed at any my long silence which you attribute to the slight cause -- though having so much to thank you for especially in the seed way I should have been more grateful to say the least.

The fact is that I have lost my aide, [Sir William Turner Thiselton--]Dyer, for a season, he having work that pays at S. Kensington. & I have had much more to do than ever -- of course I have under those circumstances taken in hand a lot of work that I had no

[[2]] business to undertake. And neglected more than ever what I ought to do --

E.G. I have been writing a Botanical Primer for Macmillan Series*1, to keep company with Huxley &Tyndall. and for the last month have given also a deal of time daily to experiments with Cephalotes, Nepenthes &Sarracenia for Darwin or self or both -- Now are you sure that any Sarracenia secretes fluid spontaneously ? --

I have utterly neglected Gen[era] Plant[arum]: having so very few continuous days or half days to give to it, & I cannot work it, as I can Flora Indica c by jerks -- The latter has

[[3]] given me unexected trouble. Except Dyer & [William Philip] Hiern no one has worked well & I had no idea how difficult it appears to be to be a middling systematist even. Masters, Edgeworth, Andrews, Lawson & others cost me hours & hours of work -- Edgeworth's indeed I had wholly to re do -- I am now printing Celastrineae.

We enjoyed our Florence trip much, though the Congress was a fiasco -- That selfish little "Tragopogon" *2 Parlatore*3 was confined to his room with whooping cough, & would let no one take any V[ice]. P[resident]ship or other office. Consequently we were not ever received or called on by a single soul in

[[4]] the name of the Congress !!! – Carnel & Tchitchacheff the Syndic[?] were most kind as were, of course the Miss Horners, & Bale & his wife were there -- so we enjoyed our trip thoroughly -- we went to Paris, Nimes, Montpelier, Antibes -- Montara (Hanbury[']s brothers place near Montara) Genoa, Spezzie [La Spezia], Pisa -- & returned by Venice (where we met Mrs Harvey) the Brenner [Pass] Munich & Paris -- 5 weeks away. The weather was wretched the whole time & I had bad whooping cough myself, caught from my children before I left -- oddly enough I had to take the Presidents place at Florence -- it was so ordered by that little toad Parlatore because I was

[Remainder of the letter missing] *4

ENDNOTES

1. Refers to the series of 'Science Primer' books published by Macmillan, for which Hooker wrote the volume entitled Botany.

2. Tragopogon. A genus of flowering plants in the sunflower family, also known as 'goatsbeard'.

3. Filippo Parlatore – (1817--1877) Italian Botanist, based in Florence. Director of Royal Museum of Natural History at Florence and Professor of Botany, who took care of the donation of Hooker’s large collections and herbarium of his work in Italy.

4. Letter appears incomplete. It bears no signature but is written in the hand of Joseph Dalton Hooker.

Please note that work on this transcript is ongoing. Users are advised to study electronic image(s) of this document where possible.