and the 'Beagle,' 1826-30, forming Volume I of the work, which includes the
later voyage of the "Beagle," Captain Fitz-Roy wrote (March, 1839):
"Captain King took great pains in forming and preserving a botanical
collection, aided by a person embarked solely for that purpose. He placed
this collection in the British Museum, and was led to expect that a first-
rate botanist would have examined and described it; but he has been
disappointed." A reference to Robert Brown's dilatoriness over King's
collection occurs in the "Life and Letters," I., page 274, note.), and made
him very indignant, but it seems a much harder one would not have been
wasted. My cryptogamic collection was sent to Berkeley; it was not large.
I do not believe he has yet published an account, but he wrote to me some
year ago that he had described [the specimens] and mislaid all his
descriptions. Would it not be well for you to put yourself in
communication with him, as otherwise something will perhaps be twice
laboured over? My best (though poor) collection of the cryptogams was from
the Chonos Islands.

Would you kindly observe one little fact for me, whether any species of
plant, peculiar to any island, as Galapagos, St. Helena, or New Zealand,
where there are no large quadrupeds, have hooked seeds--such hooks as, if
observed here, would be thought with justness to be adapted to catch into
wool of animals.

Would you further oblige me some time by informing me (though I forget this
will certainly appear in your "Antarctic Flora") whether in islands like
St. Helena, Galapagos, and New Zealand, the number of families and genera
are large compared with the number of species, as happens in coral islands,
and as, I believe, in the extreme Arctic land. Certainly this is the case
with marine shells in extreme Arctic seas. Do you suppose the fewness of
species in proportion to number of large groups in coral islets is owing to