From:
Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker
To:
Otto Stapf
Date:
27 May 1909
Source of text:
JDH/1/9 f.748, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Summary:
No summary available.
Contributor:
Hooker Project
No summary available.
No summary available.
No summary available.
No summary available.
No summary available.
JDH informs Otto Stapf that he has received a Swedish Journal: ARKIV FÖR BOTANIK number 8 parts 1-5, 1909, issued by Kungl. Svenska Vetenskapsakademien [The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences]. JDH asks if he should send the work to the herbarium of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Annotations written in another hand, believed to be that of herbarium assistant Sydney Alfred Skan, indicates that RBG Kew already receives the journal for Stockholm & that it appears in the library catalogue under Stockholm. An additional annotation confirms that the journal is the continuation of an existing one under a different title as JDH suspected: K. VETENSKAPS ACADEMIA. JDH also asks if the RBG Kew library wants L'ACADEMIE INTERNATIONALE DE GEOG. BOT., to which Skan has indicated that they already subscribe.
No summary available.
JDH writes to inform Otto Stapf that he has identified [Alfred Karl] Meebold's supposedly new balsam as an existing species to be found in the RBG Kew herbarium: Impatiens bicolor. He is returning the Balsams addressed to the Director [Sir David Prain]. JDH offers 2 brochures for the RBG Kew herbarium library, they are entitled BOTANISCHE WANDTAFELN & TURGOR DER MARKSTRAHLZELLEN. He does not understand the German terminology in the titles but has determined that they concern the fertilisation of orchids, Beech leaf tissue, a Plasmodium & the treatment of wood by salpeter. They were given to JDH by George King. An annotation signed by Stapf records that he has acknowledged receipt of Meebold's impatiens, accepted the brochures for the library & explained their German titles to JDH.
No summary available.
No summary available.
No summary available.
No summary available.
No summary available.
JDH thanks Otto Stapf for providing him with a list of Balsam names from the card catalogue. He will see to the date of Impatiens lasiophyton. JDH currently working on Meebold's collection, the best organised of any Indian collection he has seen. It includes some new species which JDH will describe for the KEW BULLETIN. JDH recommends a book he is by F.B. Bradley-Birt: THROUGH PERSIA FROM THE GULF TO THE CASPIAN. He praises the descriptions in the book, mentioning particularly the accounts of Shiraz, Sadi [Sari?] & Persepolis. He reports that his eczema has subsided & thanks Stapf for visiting & distracting him whilst he was in pain.
No summary available.
JDH compliments Sir William Turner Thiselton-Dyer for his article on [William Botting] Hemsley. JDH finds that he is unable to satisfactorily fulfil WTTD's request to write down his memories of Robert Brown as Brown was always a very reticent friend. Hooker particularly recalls failing to persuade Brown into conversation about the latter's time on [Captain Mathew] Flinders voyage, even though JDH knew the place in Risdon, Tasmania where Brown had lived at that time. JDH does go on to recount his friendship with Brown from their first meeting in the 1830s in Glasgow. He recalls Brown taking 30 years to provide a requested specimen of Eriophorum alpinum from the bog of Forfar & gifting JDH with a copy of his work PRODROMUS FLORAE NOVAE HOLLANDIAE ET INSULAE VAN DIEMEN, asking JDH to fill some of Joseph Banks' jars with orchids for preservation in an experimental liquid, & always putting off helping JDH identify Tasmanian plants from the HMS 'Erebus' voyage. Brown was also notoriously reluctant to share herbarium specimens, for example when a set of Tierra Del Fuego plants was requested through Captain [Philip Parker] King. Brown unsuccessfully requested that [Sir John] Barrow fund the publication of the botany & zoology of the Erebus' voyage to Antarctica. It was [John] McClelland who secured the money from [Sir Robert] Peel. Brown gave no aid in the struggle to secure maintenance for RBG Kew & threatened to quarrel over Sir William Jackson Hooker's 'candidature' [for Director of RBG Kew?]. Brown was upset by the reformations to the Linnean Society & its move to Burlington House from Soho Square, where it had been holding Brown's unexamined collections. JDH asks if Lismacea has flourished. He reports he has had bad eczema on his back.