278 RETIREMENT, TO 1897 : BOTANICAL WORK 



Meissner x over and over again, but really my work is, thougl 

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

 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 o; 

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

 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 witl 

 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 ! Mucl 

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

 his room at the Herbarium, where I am about three day: 

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

 marvellous knowledge. He has far the greatest knowledgi 

 of Phaenogams of any two Botanists that ever lived. Yoi 

 cannot puzzle him. 



To Asa Gray 



Sept. 27, 1886. 



I am more and more absorbed in Indian Botany, am 

 have thrown aside all idea of making headway with — am 

 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 an« 

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

 monographs of various families to De Candolle's Prodromes Linnceus, Botanisch 

 Zeitung, Hooker's Journal of Botany, Warming's Symbolae Botanicae, Lehmann' 

 Plantae Preissianae and the Flora Brasiliensis, and also published, lSSG-^ 

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

 his death to Columbia College, New York. 



2 Christian Gottfried Nees von Esenbeck (1776-1858), physician and botar 

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

 at Erlangen in 1817; and chosen President of the Imperial Leop. Carol. Aka 

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

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

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

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



3 Edmond Boissier (1810-85), botanist and traveller, born and educate' 

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

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

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

 Between 1842 and 1854 appeared the first series of his Diagnoses Plantaru? 

 Orientalium Novarum, in 1848 his monograph of the Plumbagineae, and in 186 

 his elaboration of the genus Euphorbia, and the Icones Euphorbiarium in 186< 

 His great work,the Flora Orientalism five volumes, was published between 186 

 and 1884. 



