WCP6942

[1]

Broadstone, Wimborne.

Feb^y 6th. 1908

Dear Mr. Slater

Many thanks for the various information given me in your last letter, which will be very useful and sufficient on most points. I shall however, be very glad if you will send me the following books:—

(1) "The Phytologist". Vol. I. (as far as p.540 — which I suppose is in 1st. part.) [2]

(2) Hooker & Taylor's Musc. Brit. — the old edition which Spruce used, if you have it. If not any later one.

(3) Any Flora of France giving the Mosses if you have such a thing. I sh^d think Spruce had one.

Do you know approximately how many sets of his Pyrenean [sic] Flowering Plants, & how many of the Mosses & Hepatica — [3] Spruce collected and disposed of [?] I presume they not only paid for his journey but left a fair surplus, or I do not see how he could have lived the next 3 years till he went to S. Am. — & paid for his outfit, & the first years expenses there — as I find no record of any money advanced him — but he says in a letter to Mr. Borrer that he had saved "very little out of his School-master work! ["]

He got 30/- a hundred for all of them¹ [4]

One more point please explain to me. In the Catalogus Muscorum of Spruce's Amazonian Mosses — the same name is often repeated many times,— as Hyocomium incompletum (p.16) 18 times ! and the majority seem to be repeated 2 to a dozen times. I suppose they are specimens from diff. localities. As the total consecutive numbers are 1508 [1518?] — it looks as if the species' can be only 400 — or 500 at most — But as many are marked sp. only it is hardly worthwhile counting them. I had a copy of Mitten's book years ago, but I think I must have²