88 KEW, ST. PETEKSBURG, AND MAROCCO 



The Palaces are gorgeous, but one gets quite sick of 

 French decoration, and endless cabinets of diamonds and 

 rubies. The streets are enormous and horribly paved, dis- 

 tances are tremendous, living very expensive, and the place 

 terribly unhealthy. I never saw such sickly children, and 

 I am assured that the mortality exceeds the births by 6000 

 per annum ; immigration of French and Germans keeps up 

 the population. 



The Exposition was very fair, but the arrangements 

 extremely bad. The Emperor was most polite ; received a 

 lot of us at his palace of Tsarskoe Selo, showed us himself 

 over the private apartments that were of historic interest, 

 gave us two dejeuners, and at the end decorated a dozen 

 or so of the savants and expositors. As I declined a decora- 

 tion, he has sent me a pair of beautiful jasper vases from a 

 private mine he has in Tomsk which he reserves for such 

 purposes. I was sorely puzzled what to do about the decora- 

 tion, not wishing to be rude on one hand, and on the other 

 anxious to avoid it, lest my motives in coming, after the 

 refusal of Lowe to send me, should be misunderstood. So 

 I said that as one could not wear foreign decorations at our 

 Court, I would decline, adding that to Englishmen of science 

 they were not of the same value as to foreigners. His 

 functionaries were most civil about it, .and he consequently 

 sent to me the vases and to my two compatriots, Murray 

 and Hogg, each a malachite table. 1 



With Moscow we were enchanted, and could have spent 

 weeks there with pleasure ; it is as eminently national as 

 St. P. is the contrary. 



To avoid the weariness of the train journey to Berlin, 

 a return was made by Stockholm and Upsala, Copenhagen 

 and Hamburg, then by Hanover, Utrecht, Amsterdam, the 

 Hague and Leyden to Rotterdam, inspecting the Botanical 

 Gardens and their Museums throughout. 



1 ' Medals were distributed by the score, and some thirty or forty decora- 

 tions distributed. They offered me a high one on my arrival, independent of 

 the Congress, and I declined it on various grounds. The Gardeners' Chronicle 

 has stated that it was owing to Dr. Hooker's advice that decorations were no.t 

 given to Delegates from England. This is utterly untrue. I was never con- 

 sulted about them, and the decoration offered to me was before the meeting of 

 the Congress and independent of it.' (To Asa Gray, June 25.) 



