WCP3914

[1]

Broadstone, Wimborne

Jan[uar]^y. 4th. 1908

My dear Sir Jos. Hooker¹

I am glad to inform you that I have, at last, finished the rather tedious work of putting together the various scattered materials left by Spruce² so as to form a connected account of his Travels and Work. The deciding what was to be omitted and what retained, was very difficult, and it was only after getting together the whole ^of what I thought could properly be included, and then going through [2] the whole again (for the 3rd or 4th time) and cutting out a good deal more, that I have been able to reduce the whole into dimensions suitable for the general reader, while retaining ^all the less technical botanical observations. Fully half the material of the Journals, Letters, & Notes, has had to be rejected.

I now have only to write a short biographical Introduction, and in this I wish much to [3] give some appreciation of Spruce's work as a collector and botanist (under the difficult conditions he had to struggle against), but can find none— except as regards his work on the Hepatica, which is universally praised.

The great Biograph. part of "Martins", which you kindly ordered for me to see, gives only the fact bare facts of each collector's work and the "Nos." they put to these plants, but with no critical remarks or appreciation. His ^Spruce's paper on the Palms, in the Linnean Journal, was the only complete piece of bot[anical]. work on the higher flowering plants he was able to do. I see, in it, he suggests some [4] new characters for the general subdivision of the order. Do you yourself consider his suggestions to be sound, or have any later writers or systematists followed them?

I know that Spruce devoted himself mainly to the collection of forest trees— the most difficult, and at that time the most neglected? part of S. American botany. From all the evidence of his notes &c. I sh[oul]^d think these formed a very large proportion of all his species. Has any botanist give an enumeration of these, with an estimate of the new species, & new genera, cont[aine]^d in them? I believe you were in charge of Kew Herbarium during the time Spruce's collections were arriving. Can you give me just a short par. giving your estimate or impression, on these points, that I may quote?

Yours very sincerely, with best wishes, | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]