a a es 
ee ee es tit bee ee 
Fa ee ee Ta ee 
xT. 40.] TO A. DE CANDOLLE. 377 
the family of Mr. and Mrs. Todhunter, Dr. Harvey’s 
sister. Going on board the steamer at ten in the 
evening, he met with the severe accident of which he 
gives an account in his letters. Dr. Harvey came 
from Dublin to help in nursing him. His vigor and 
elasticity helped him to a speedy recovery, but it in- 
creased a general tendency to stoop, and he was never 
so erect afterwards. 
He was able to get to Kew the last of December, 
and spent the winter in hard work in Sir William 
Hooker’s herbarium, which was then in his house at 
West Park. 
TO A. DE CANDOLLE. 
CumMBERLAND Prace, Kew, December 28, 1850. 
Your kind favor of December 6th, forwarded to 
me by Bentham, to Dublin, would have been sooner 
acknowledged, but that it found me an invalid. On 
our way from Hereford to Dublin I had just gone on 
board a steamer at Holyhead, early in the evening ; 
had left Mrs. Gray in the ladies’ cabin, when, coming 
on deck again, I stepped over an open hatchway which 
had been left for the moment very carelessly un- 
guarded and unlighted. I fell full eighteen feet, they 
say, to the bottom of the hold, striking partly on my 
right hand and the side of my right leg, bruising and 
straining both, but principally on my right side against 
a timber projecting from the floor, fracturing two of 
my ribs. It is truly wonderful that I was not more 
seriously and permanently injured. I was taken on 
shore at once and had good medical attendance. I re- 
covered so rapidly that in a week I was comfortably 
taken across to Dublin, where I was kindly cared for 
by good friends ; in two weeks more I left for London, 
