712 FINAL JOURNEYS AND WORK. [1880, 



TO MESSRS. BEDFIELD AND CANBY. 



KEW, December 12, 1880. 



MY DEAR BRETHREN, REDFIELD AND CANBY, 

 I think I had a letter from each of you, and that you 

 had some response from me of some sort (and one or 

 two papers, etc., have come from Redfield), but that 

 was so far back in memory when we were staying in 

 Kew before, that it seems to belong to that early phase 

 in my existence when I was living on the other side 

 of the ocean ; and that seems as widely distant in 

 time as the ocean is wide in space ! It is only by the 

 almanac that we know that we left Cambridge less 

 than three and a half months ago. 



I have not done very much for botany in all that 

 time ; but Mrs. Gray and I have laid in a stock of 

 health and vigor, corporeally, and have filled our 

 heads with such interesting memories ! This and such 

 constant changes of scene have produced the illusion 

 I refer to, through which, as through a haze, I dimly 

 discern last summer. But out of that haze your 

 bright and kindly faces look undimmed. 



Did I tell you (I think I did) of the pleasant fort- 

 night here in September, when guests at Hooker's ; 

 when for botany I worked up Oxytropis ; when De 

 Candolle and wife were here, and Bentham serene 

 old man dined with us almost every day ; of our 

 crossing one bright day to Paris, and all that ? . . . 

 Thence, abandoning, from lateness of the season, the 

 plan of returning through Auvergne, we came on quick 

 via Nimes, Lyons, etc., to Paris. 



There Mrs. Gray and I passed three very busy and 

 very charming weeks ; also doing some good botanical 

 work, and having a good time with Decaisne and the 



