T02 FINAL JOURNEYS AND WORK. [1880, 
Tuesday for the Loire district and thence to Spain, 
but expect to return here after our round, and stay 
possibly a month. Play first, work afterwards, is our 
present motto. If the Academy, or any of the breth- 
ren, take Garber’s little Porto Rico collection, you or 
they will be glad to know that Professor Oliver and 
I named them up while I was at Kew, and that the 
list has been forwarded to D. C. Eaton. News I have 
little to tell you. Yet, though we left home only a 
month ago, it seems a half year. We had a botanical 
concours at Kew; for De Candolle and wife came 
over, as he says, to see Mrs. Gray and me, and the Hook- 
ers gave two dinner parties on the occasion; present 
four botanists, whose united ages sum up high, for 
Bentham had his eightieth birthday just before, De 
Candolle is about seventy-five, I on the verge of 
seventy, and Hooker, the baby of the set, in his sixty- 
fourth year; some younger botanists were with us, — 
Oliver, Baker, Masters, young Balfour, ete. 
TO J. D. HOOKER. 
Maxaca, August 30, 1880. 
... As to pictures, you know I am no picture 
sharp ; but Madrid and Seville (which must be taken 
together) are a revelation of Murillo and Velasquez. 
. . . That kind of thing is nearly over with us on 
leaving attractive and sunny Seville. We cut off 
Jerez and Cordova, and came in here yesterday 
through olive groves enough to saponify and saladu- 
late creation, and the passage through the mountains 
from Bobadilla to Malaga, wonderfully grand, ending 
in orange groves filling lovely dells and_ valleys. 
