WCP6749

[1] [p. 33]

Barton

29th March, 1869.

My dear Lyell,

I cannot help thinking it a pity that Mr. Wallace, in his excellent book on the Malay Archipelago,¹ did not get some friend to correct his botany. At page 184, he gives a list of what he calls European genera of plants found on the high mountains of Java; and from the context it is evident he means genera which are specially and characteristically European. Now nearly half of those in his list are not so at all, but either groups of very wide distribution or such as merely struggle into Europe. Thus, Impatients has ninety-six Indian species and one European; Lobelia, twenty-six in South Africa, a great many in Mexico, two or three in Europe; Oxalis, above one hundred in South Africa, and I believe one strictly European; Rhododendron, four in Europe and eight or ten times as many in India. Even Quercus and Vacinium, according to Joseph Hooker², have their head-quarters not in Europe but in sub-tropical Asia.

Again, Hypercium occurs in almost every country which is not very cold; and Polygonum is still more ubiquitous. I rather wonder that so great a naturalist as Mr. Wallace should have fallen into the common-place error of supposing that a group is specially European, because its European representatives [2] [p. 34] happen to be the most familiarly known. I am sure he would not have done so in the case of a zoological group.

I am very much interested in the book, particularly in the development of that very curious observation which he first published in the Linnean Journal, as to the two distinct zoological provinces in that region, and their boundary line in the narrow strait of Lomboll [Lombok].³

This weather is favourable for reading, as it by no means invites to out-door sauntering. March seems inclined to march out in a very un-lamb-like fashion. Yet the buds of the trees are swelling, and the red American Maple, Acer rubrum is in full flower.

With much love to Mary⁴,

Believe me ever, yours affectionately,

Charles J. F. Bunbury