600 TRAVEL IN EUROPE AND AMERICA. [1870, 



especially for Mrs. Gray, and it now seems a long 

 time ago. I dropped at once into a world of work ; 

 but am not killing myself. The main struggle for 

 existence will come in the spring, when my duties 

 crowd on me dreadfully. 



It gave us both very great pleasure to see again 

 Mrs. Darwin's well-known handwriting, and your sig- 

 nature. 



I knew you would be pleased with young Agassiz 

 and his Yankee wife. I wish his health were better ; 

 and I do hope your own will be such that you can 

 next summer see and know my trump of a colleague 

 J. Wyman. 



TO GEORGE BENTHAM. 



CAMBRIDGE, March 28, 1870. 



. . . You hope that I will not resign my chair here 

 unless to devote myself wholly to botanical work. 

 What other object could I have in view ? I am not 

 likely to be idle, and I care for nothing else. The 

 difficulty is, that the university cannot well spare me 

 now, nor find a fit person to take either the whole or 

 a part of my work, but there is a good disposition to 

 favor my views. 



Charles Wright is helping me as curator of the her- 

 barium, and is getting the large accessions into it 

 rather slowly. 



The winter is nearly passed ; I have employed dil- 

 igently all the time I could command, but the net 

 result looks small. All I have for the printer is a 

 revision of Eriogoneae, which I have turned over to 

 him, and which you shall soon see. I think I have 

 done it very well. I have in Eriogonum made use 

 of a character which you have not employed, i. e., the 



