WCP5541

[1]¹

Capetown.

June 17 [18]’96²

My dear Friend,

I have to acknowledge the arrival of the 50 copies of Part i Fl[ora]. Cap[iensis]³. The Chief Clerk, Mr Hammond Tooke⁴, has followed such suggestions as I have been able to make respecting the free distribution of them. The useful men have been gratified with a copy, and we have ascertained what public libraries and museums have on their shelves a set of the previous three vol[ume]s. and have sent on a copy of this part to carry on the series. So there has been none of the indiscriminate giving that often goes on from official books at the Cape. I think the people who have a right to an opinion are very glad to get this instalment. I have heard no grumbling — save a little in a good humoured way over the analyses as the head of the genera. The "botanist" (!) who wants names, got easily, and is then satisfied, is hardly the person to judge of the great difficulty presented by Irideae⁵ [sic] in constructing diagnostic analyses. I have tried it myself and gave up Moraea⁶ [sic] and some others in sheer despair. The whole matter respecting a further grant has been taken up in good spirit. Our Minister, Faure⁷, is in possession of a brief statement of the case, its history, & the present readiness of a competent array of collaborations to proceed, taken mainly from your last very interesting letter. The proposal for a further grant for a new vol[ume]. has gone in to Sir Gordon Sprigg⁸ and I have no doubt will [2]⁹ appear on the Miscellaneous Estimates at the end of the present session, — the usual time for such things — when the Boer Member is getting tired of parliamentary life, aired[?] tho’[ugh] is he with the relaxation of the billiard table and the bar-maids at the Parly. [Parliament] refreshment rooms, and longs to get back home to his own feather-bed and his portly vrouw¹⁰. Even the 36/6¹¹ he gets every day for his allowance, and the pocketing of which is the chief object of his getting into the House[,] fails to keep him longer than his lawful 90 days, at which period it ceases. Hence when that paying terminus is reached, Sir Gordon presents his Miscellaneous Estimates in one wheelbarrow load and gets him shot in a heap among the Passed and Past. It might be well to write a nice little note to him — you know how to do it. We all like our feathers smoothed down a little.

With this I am sending a copy of a pamphlet the sight of which makes one truly sick. The M[anu]S[cript]. was handed in to the gov[ernmen]^t. printers in the first week of February¹²: it is now the 3rd week of June, and the press has only this morning been delivered of it. The text throughout is mine, the tabular lists of fruit sorts are Pillans’s¹³. He is the practical man; my practice has never run to much culture of fruit. Whether it will be more than caviar to the general¹⁴ I doubt. We don’t like hard work, least of all in the orchard, where "God Almighty" is always charged with the management of the trees after the boer has stuck them into a 20 inch hole in the unbroken expanse of soil. I think you had my Constantia¹⁵ report, if not it shall be sent. Also I enclose an abstract of a chapter contributed to Wallace’s forthcoming book. It was written long ago & we have improved a little since its date — not much however¹⁶.

I am building up Centuria XVII¹⁷, — am complete, and have so many good plants over that there is a temptation to run into a semi centuria more. There are today 25 surplus sets, and the desire to have done with them is strong.

Enclosed is a curious Cladosporium¹⁸ — sort of a parasitic fungus on Ericineae¹⁹, [sic] which I believe Mr Masser²⁰ recently described. I have found it some years on Erica baccans, but this year it was doing much mischief on Acrostemon hirsutus, Vel. & the shrublets were looking very miserable under its ravages. Will you kindly let me have a memorandum of its name?

Lest this letter, as usual, stretches away to the end of the sheet I give over at once. Over-irrigation is a very common failing at the Cape, & Capensians are slow to say sat prata biberunt²¹, but prate away indefinitely.

Faithfully | P. MacOwan [signature]