£7. 55.] TO GEORGE BENTHAM. 547 
So do not you “ growl” at me now if you ean help 
it. 
Alas, your Algz will be too late for dear Harvey. 
He is dying of consumption, and we may hear of the 
end any day. This is all at present from 
Your old, worn-out friend, Asa GRAY. 
TO GEORGE BENTHAM. 
June 12, 1866. 
We have as many asters as we can manage in Amer- 
ica, and in the northern hemisphere of the Old World. 
I pray you keep out at least Australian things if it be 
possible. 
I envy you more and more in being able to devote 
yourself to systematic botany steadily, without the 
distraction and sad consumption of time in profes- 
sional and administrative duties and avocations, which 
make havoc of the opportunities of most botanists, 
and make their work which they are able to do far 
less valuable than it would otherwise be. And you 
work on with such quiet determination! The lamented 
losses of the last year or two have already made you 
the Nestor, though I cannot think you old. I do hope 
you have a fair number of good working years yet, 
in which you can make your great experience tell to 
utmost advantage. . . 
Much against my will, T have this summer to work 
upon a new edition of my “ Manual of the Northern 
United States Botany,” to which there is much to be 
done. I shall not, however, so recast the work as I 
should if I could defer it till I had blocked out the 
outlines of a similar but much larger volume for all 
the United States of America, and till your “ Genera 
Flora” had been carried much farther. 
