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and to tell you what I have done to your paper. I 

 should not be worthy of your friendship if I did not 

 exeeutc my trust faithfully. First, then, you may be 

 assured, as far as I have any judgement, (and I have 

 been privy to. many a consultation with Dryander 

 about these plants,) that your paper, both in its aim 

 and execution, will do you great honour as a botanist, 

 and render a material piece of service to the science. 

 No one before you has given any plausible account of 

 these genera, as you well know. Your treatise is a 

 plain, clear, unaffected discourse. Perhaps I was, at 

 first reading it, disappointed that you had not made 

 something more of it in the way of composition, with 

 respect to ornament or episode, because I know that 

 you are one of the few, who, with real science, could 

 have done so. But this might have been " soaring 

 above the path of true simplicity," and the more I 

 read your paper, the less I feel any want of such 

 adventitious merits ; — I only mention all that has 

 occurred to my mind. The leading qualities of 

 these plants, their beauty, their fragrance, their 

 affinity or resemblance to Palms or Orchidece, 

 whether real or supposed, the hot and moist climates 

 which they prefer, — these N things might have been 

 alluded to. I should not, however, regret that 

 scarcely any other pen than yours had passed them 

 over. 



You and I may congratulate one another on our 

 good-humoured critics. I have composed a new 

 introductory lecture for the Royal Institution. It 

 will refute Salisbury, and yet not honour him with 

 apparent notice. I think your critic an angel (or at 



