I have not examined Moorcroft. yet, but if the figure in Roxb. is trustworthy it’s a primary and no mistake.  I can’t understand your admitting Amarellae without coronae.  The presence of a corona is part of the definition of the amarella group, and an amarella without a corona is a primary ipso facto.

Taking the facts as I have got them in the rough, and subject to minor verifications, the contrast between the Andean, Himalayan, and Caucasian Gentian Florae is very striking.

Table of gentian Florae.

Column 1:  Place. 
Column 2:  Simplices. 
Column 3:  Ciliatae. 
Column 4:  Coronatae. 
Column 5:  Interlobatae.

Andes :  27 :  0 (?) :  15 :  2.

Himalayas 1 (Moorecroft.) :  0 :  4 :  32.

Caucasus Pyrenees (all one) :  2 (lutea, umbellata) :  2 :  5 :  21.

I don’t think Ciliatae worth anything as a division.  I took it as it stood.

It is clear that migration helps nothing, as between the old-world and South American Florae.  It is the case of the Tapirs (Andean and Sino-Malayan) over again.  Relics of a tertiary Flora which once extended from South America to Eurasia through North America (by the west, probably).

I see a book by Engler on the development of Floras since tertiary epoch.  Probably the beggar has the idea.

Ever yours,

T.H.  Huxley.

Godalming, September 25, 1886.

My dear Foster,

We are here till to-morrow on a visit to Leonard, seeing how the young folks keep house.

I brought the Egyptian report down with me.  It is very important, and in itself justifies the expenditure.  Any day next (that is to say this) week that you like I can see Colonel Turner.  If you and Evans can arrange a day I don’t think we need mind the rest of the Committee.  We must get at least two other borings ten or fifteen miles off, if possible on the same parallel, by hook or by crook.  It will tell us more about the Nile valley than has ever been known.  That Italian fellow who published sections must have lied considerably.

Touching gentians, I have not examined your specimen yet, but it certainly did not look like Andrewsii.  You talk of having acaulis in your garden.  That is one of the species I worked out most carefully at Arolla, but its flowering time was almost over, and I only got two full-blown specimens to work at.  If you have any in flower and don’t mind sacrificing one with a bit of the rhizoma, and would put it in spirit for me, I could settle one or two points still wanting.  Whisky will do, and you will be all the better for not drinking the whisky!

The distributional facts, when you work them in connection with morphology, are lovely.  We put up with Donnelly on our way here.  He has taken a cottage at Felday, eleven miles from hence, in lovely country—­on lease.  I shall have to set up a country residence some day, but as all my friends declare their own locality best, I find a decision hard.  And it is a bore to be tied to one place.