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ane 
ET. 62.] TO A. DE CANDOLLE. 6438 
Your announcement leads me to expect soon the 
new (and alas, last!) volume of the “ Prodromus.” 
Well, it must give you a huge sense of relief to have 
it off your hands; something like the relief I now 
feel at the termination, at the close of thirty-one years, 
of my professorial duties, upon which you felicitate 
me. On account of a summer course of instruction, 
which I felt bound to initiate for my successor, I did not 
really close my labors until the end of July. Since then 
I have been able to work at systematic botany very 
steadily. We took, my wife and I, a holiday of a 
fortnight, in which we visited friends on the Hudson 
River and its tributaries, at the close of September, 
just as the foliage was beginning to display the bright 
autumnal tints, which this year have been unusually 
gorgeous, and have not yet disappeared, although the 
leaves are now falling fast. The sight is most enjoy- 
able to me in the earlier autumn, when the verdure 
still prevails and makes a setting for the red, yellow, 
and russet. 
I am now deep in the Composite for the “ Califor- 
nia Flora” of my friend Brewer, and so am trying 
Bentham’s work. It generally holds good, — wonder- 
fully so, considering its extent, and the comparatively 
short time he took for it. 
Your agreeable volume of “ Miscellanies” is now 
in the hands of your old friend and my neighbor, 
Jules Mareou ; who asked to borrow it, having been 
unable to purchase a copy. It is reported out of print. 
I think I sent you a light article I wrote for the 
“ Nation ” last summer,—I believe in June, —in which 
I gave an abstract of your essay on the Dominant 
Language of the Twentieth Century. It has attracted 
considerable attention. I see that those who have 
