406 CORRESPONDENCE. [1854, 



Nor is it easy to reflect and remember what I have 

 been doing, so as to tell you. . . . 



I forgot to tell you, too, that Thurber l called on 

 me and offered his plants collected under Bartlett. 

 I have written out the greater part up to the end of 

 Compositse, my old sticking-place, a number of new 

 things, mostly from deeper down in Sonora than you 

 went, and in southwest California. Beyond doubt 

 Torrey will work up a part. I shall merely furnish 

 characters and botanical remarks to Thurber, and let 

 him do all the rest of the talk. Bartlett is still in 

 hopes that the Senate will print a great report for 

 him. I greatly doubt if they do. If so, Thurber's 

 botany will go as an appendix. If not, he will make 

 a memoir of the things, up to Composite, and the 

 striking things beyond, and afterwards I may lick up 

 the rest in the general continuation of " Plantse 

 Wrightianse," etc. 



Meanwhile the United States minister at Mexico 

 has been making a treaty, now before our Senate, for 

 buying a further slice of Chihuahua and Sonora, to 

 take in Lake Guzman and the Sonora country some 

 way south of where you went, that is, below San Pe- 

 dro. So there will have to be a new survey if this 

 treaty is ratified, and a chance of more botany. I 

 wish you were to be here to attend to it ; only you 

 have already taken off the cream of that country, and 

 can now do more, and find more novelty, in some of 

 the countries you are going to. 



From Governor Stevens's party, from Minnesota to 

 Washington Territory, north of Oregon, bundles of 



1 George Thurber, 1821-1890 ; born in Providence ; botanist to the 

 United States and Mexican Boundary Survey Commission ; then in 

 the Assay Office in New York ; later, editor of the American Agri- 

 culturist ; a student of grasses. 



