Royal Gardens Kew
Kew, March 28. 82
My dear Sir Ferdinand
I have to acknowledge the safe recpt. of your letters of 14/2 & 16/2/82, as well as
the superb photographs of
and M. spiralis.
Sir Joseph Hooker is much delighted with them. For of course you understand well
that though as a sort of departmental duty I have taken the nomenclature of this splendid
group in hand and the revision of the collection both living and preserved I am doing
it on behalf of the Establishment. Any generous help you give
me
is therefore
given
to Kew
and any specimens & information, as well as these sumptuous photographs, goes to
swell the obligations of the national establishment to you and will remain when I
am dead and gone for other scientific men to work upon and as evidence of your disinterested
and liberal aid to botanical science. It is part of our system to at once put in its
place everything we receive even the most trifling. So that if I never see the end
of this Cycad business all my material is in order for some one else to take up and
carry to a conclusion.
I know no group of plants the study of which is more arduous than that of
and I can certainly endorse all you say [as] to the labour of procuring specimens
and information. But it is amazing now that I have begun to work how material flows
in. Only the other day I found in the Herbarium at Oxford what seemed to me an undescribed
and new American form. It is with the new world species that I shall have I foresee
the greatest difficulty and trouble. As to the Australian types I must rest content
with having enlisted your interest and sympathy. It wd be worse than impertinence
to attempt to rival your skill and resources in any portion of the field which is
now so peculiarly your own. Every possible light you can throw on the subject will
be so much clear gain to me. In the long run I shall hope to be able with your help
to correctly determine the fine things we have from Australia in our museum and in
the Palm House
If ever I can float the book I contemplate on the
of the world
I will not fail to do full justice to the officials who have collaborated with you
in the production of the fine photographs I have just received The Encephalartos from
Brisbane is certainly the E. villosus of Natal. It is well characterized by the peculiar
toothing of the lower edge of the scutum of the scale in the ♀ cone — E. Hildebrandtii from Zanzibar is closely allied in foliage but well distinguished
in fruit as you will see from the inclosed photo. a print from a negative taken by
Mr John Kirk at Zanzibar
I inclose also a photo. of a
♂
cone of "Cycas Thouarsii" from the same source
must, in point of size of cone, run the Encephalartoses of S. Africa very hard. The
most authentic measurement I know is a cone of E. longifolius from Kew which excluding
the stipe measured 22 inches. M. Moorei sent by you only reaches 20 inches. But then
you say that the species produces larger cones. I shd judge from what one knows of
the dimensions the plant attains that it is most respects the King of the family —
like Saul a head and shoulders above its fellows
I have also recd the leaves of this plant. Do they belong to either of the plants
which yielded the cones?
Miquel in his Monographia published Bauer's figures of
Macrozamia
spiralis
I suppose this wd be from the drawings at Vienna which I imagine to be duplicates
of those preserved in the Botanical Department at the British Museum.
I believe they have there a series of engraved copper plates of Australian plants
impressions from which have never been published I am not sure however about this.
Probably what was in my mind were the plates of New Zealand plates
mentioned in the Botany of the Antarctic voyage ii, Flora of New Zealand, Introductory
Essay p. iii.
Carruthers however would tell you what they have
Believe me
Yours sincerely
W. T. Thiselton Dyer
