WCP3918

[1]

Hurstpierpoint,

[Sussex]

11^th March 1868

My dear Spruce

I thank you very much for the Photograph you sent me as well as for your letter and for Daly's book¹. Our united opinion on the photographs was that you were represented in a highly sacerdotal manner[,] so that if we shew² ours to any one who does not know all the particulars we can pass you off as that eminent missionary who devoted so many years to the teaching of the truth amongst the Amazons of whom he converted many thousands (into specimens &c we need not explain)[.] I am really glad you have found a doctor who can alleviate your physical troubles, our D^r. Holman³ gets bigger and bigger, nothing would do but I must go and graft six grape vines for him a few days ago [sic], I never grafted one before, but he knows I have grafted many other plants and so I must do it being thus an experienced operator— We are all pretty well[,] my wife⁴ has a cold but that is common at this season, Wallace sen[io]^r. and jun[io]^r.⁵ are well. The latter crawls about and by the chairs and especially the fire irons and fender raises himself erect[,] to the satisfaction of himself and an admiring audience[,] for he commences beating with his hands and calling attention with his voice with all his might, already he shows indications [2] of an inclination to Botany by his affection for a wooden spoon (he has just been investigating the flavour of ivy leaves) and also to Travelling, for nothing pleases him more than a pair of boots or shoes to play with. My father⁶ continues well but my mother⁷ is I am afraid attacked by that slow necrosis which commences with a black spot on a toe and which her exhausted powers and age render her unable to fight against and throw off—

I have been all on upon the mosses up to the present and I am now so far advanced in the matter that I hope I shall have all the MSS complete by the end of this month. I have wasted an immense lot of time in a search for something to go upon in reducing the pleurocarpi to a regular sequence, but I can find nothing at all so intelligible as the general habit and especially the nervation of the leaves. I have not definitely settled about some of the genera or families, but I have again been obliged to give up the notion of keeping the Hookerias in a group marked out by their calyptras, and so I think of keeping those little white Hypna which I called Leucomium close to Hook[eria]. lucens together with all the heterophyllous Hypnoids. The Hookerias were more homogeneous without my new genus Pelekium, but this can by no contrivance be removed from its place close to Thuidium, very contrary too is Daltonia, so like to the Lepidopila [?] yet so really different— I now think Drepanophyllum must go with Aulacomnium and some other allied genera their place being with the Brya so far as I can see— I now think Campylopus may be kept up by making its distinction from Dicranum to depend on its perichaetia being clustered in a common involucre[.] [3] I have failed to find any substance in the divisions of Tortula which breaks very well into groups without sufficient to make good genera, that is, the differences break down in definition in a form of words— I have now to write out the definition of the differences among the groups of the heterophyllous Hypnoids i.e. those in which the leaves which are in different positions on the stem are each of different form as in nearly all the Hookeria's and those which have their leaves one nerved— I do not intend to give names to all the sections &c I may make in my genera except where the species have been commonly arranged under such a name as Webera or Desmatodon or such like— You shall see my scheme when I have done the remainders— I wrote to D^r. Hooker⁸about the enumeration of S. American mosses and sent you his reply[.] I think there is a good deal in what he says, but there is also something to be said as to the differences which exist in the subject, for I don't suppose his Begonias forget to open their capsules as mosses do when in other particulars they are the same as those which do, the difficulty that will beset the mosses for some time yet is the importance placed in an organ — peristome, which manifestly differs so greatly in Encalypta and other intensely natural genera, and which can only in such be considered in its fullest development so as to include all the less found states[,] for no one having once seen the whole of the species would care to divide them into anything more than sections and thus it is not really peristome on which [4] some genera are to be considered[,] but in the possession of some obvious characteristic quite independent, but enough of this until I send you the list of my adoptions. When I have gone through the remainder I hope to go and assure myself of a few things at Kew and talk over these matters with D^r. H[ooker]. I have kept all Weir[']s⁹ things still by me until I finish so as to issue them with a list of names[.] Will you now lay notes together for the moss Geography and will you let me have the descriptions you wrote on the spot for the species which I know you fully investigated such as Potamium Pacimoniense [,] Hemiragis aurea and more and there are notes which you took on them when you gathered a great many more species[,] which I should like to add to each of them as your own observations accessory to my necessarily curt descriptions— as I depend on your overlooking the proofs of all this matter[,] you will be able to prune down the redundant portions.

I cannot see or get back from Davies¹⁰ the notes on the Tortulas, what has become of him and his energetic friend I do not know. I will write and tell him to post the pamphlet¹¹ to you— I sent the Athen[eu]^m12 in which you will find some remarks on Spix¹³ & Martius¹⁴ by King Ludwig¹⁵.

Your barren Tortula did puzzle me, but I remembered something like it formerly on bricks in my father's garden and I think it is T[ortula]. convoluta[.]

Ever truly Yours | William Mitten [signature]