488 LETTERS TO DARWIN AND OTHERS. [1862, 



our hearty congratulations that your boy and Mrs. 

 Darwin are recovering so well. 



Tell Leonard that I was pleased both with his at- 

 tention in writing and with the ocular proof of his 

 convalescence in his being able so soon to use a pen. 

 His requests shall be kept in view ; the five-cent 

 stamp I send now; dare say I shall sometime pick 

 up the thirty and ninety, though I never saw the lat- 

 ter, nor the twelve, twenty, and twenty-four on enve- 

 lopes (the twenty-four cent he must have already, as 

 it is often used on my envelopes to you) . 



Bravo for Horace, whose illustration of Natural Se- 

 lection as to the adders is capital. A chip of the old 

 block, he evidently is. 



I told you that Rothrock had gone to the war, and 

 perhaps has already been under fire ; probably not. I 

 had intended that next spring he should do up 

 Houstonia more perfectly, and work up this and some 

 related matters for his thesis when he comes up for 

 examination. But all this is broken up by his enlist- 

 ment. . . . 



I have been lazy about all my writing, working all 

 day at dry and dull systematic botany, which you 

 anathematize. But if I get time to turn it over, I 

 will say a few words on the last chapter of your Or- 

 chid book. But it opens up a knotty sort of question 

 about accident or design, which one does not care to 

 meddle with much until one can feel his way further 

 than I can. 



October 4, 1862. 



I have just been reading Max Miiller's lecture on 

 the Science of Language with much interest. But 

 perhaps what has interested me most is, after all, his 



