278 RETIREMENT, TO 1897 : BOTANICAL WORK 



Meissner 1 over and over again, but really my work is, though 

 fatter by far, no better of its period than his was, and the 

 whole has raised old Nees 2 a good deal in my estimation. 

 It is at any rate much better than his Acanthaceae. 



I am now at Euphorbiaceae, of which Boissier 3 has of 

 course made too many species, chiefly by looking at scraps in 

 isolated herbaria. How could he have expected to find un- 

 described plants of Hayne in Herb. Vienna, Petersburg, &c. 

 Of botanical news I have none. We are busy with 

 more Icones, with what of Bentham's money has come in. 

 His affairs are not wound up yet and I am sick of them. 

 They were to have given no trouble to anybody ! Much 

 he knew ! It makes me miss him all the more. I occupy 

 his room at the Herbarium, where I am about three days 

 a week. The more I see of Oliver, the more I wonder at his 

 marvellous knowledge. He has far the greatest knowledge 

 of Phaenogams of any two Botanists that ever lived. You 

 cannot puzzle him. 



To Asa Gray 



Sept. 27, 1886. 



I am more and more absorbed in Indian Botany, and 

 have thrown aside all idea of making headway with any 

 desire to keep up with even heads of Chemico- botany, 



1 Charles Frederic Meissner (1800-74). His father, of Hanoverian origin, 

 settled at Berne, where his son was born. He was educated at Yverdon and 

 Vevey, and afterwards at Vienna, Paris, and Goettingen. He contributed 

 monographs of various families to De Candolle's Prodromus Linnceus, Botanische 

 Zeitung, Hooker's Journal of Botany, W aiming' sSymbolaeBotanicae, Lehmann's 

 Plantae Preissianae and the Flora Brasiliensis, and also published, 1836-43, 

 his Plantarum vascularium genera. He formed an extensive herbarium, sold at 

 his death to Columbia College, New York. 



a Christian Gottfried Nees von Esenbeck (1776-1858), physician and botan- 

 ist. Educated at Darmstadt and Jena 1796-9. He was Professor of Botany 

 at Erlangen in 181 7; and chosen President of the Imperial Leop. Carol. Aka- 

 demie of Natural History the same year. Subsequently he held the Chair of 

 Botany at Bonn 1819, and Breslau 1830, when he was also Director of the 

 Botanic Gardens. Among his many botanical works is the Handbuch der 

 Botanik, 1820-1. He also wrote on Entomology and Philosophy. 



8 Edmond Boissier (1810-85), botanist and traveller, born and educated 

 at Geneva. Most of his work relates to the Mediterranean Region, Spain and 

 the Orient. He published his Voyage Botanique dans le Midi de VEspagne 

 between 1839-45, and in 1842 travelled in Greece, Anatolia, Syria and Egypt. 

 Between 1842 and 1854 appeared the first series of his Diagnoses Plantarum 

 Orientalium Novarum,in 1848 his monograph of the Plumbagineae, and in 1862 

 his elaboration of the genus Euphorbia, and the Icones Euphorbiarium in 1866. 

 His great work,the Flora Orientalis in five volumes, was published between 1867 

 and 1884. 



