112 FINAL JOURNEYS AND WORK. [1880, 
TO MESSRS. REDFIELD AND CANBY. 
Kew, December 12, 1880. 
My preAR BRETHREN, REDFIELD AND CANBY, — 
I think I had a letter from each of you, and that you 
had some response from me of some sort (and one or 
two papers, etc., have come from Redfield), but that 
was so far back in memory when we were staying in 
Kew before, that it seems to belong to that early phase 
in my existence when I was living on the other side 
of the ocean; and that seems as widely distant in 
time as the ocean is wide in space! It is only by the 
almanac that we know that we left Cambridge less 
than three and a half months ago. 
I have not done very much for botany in all that 
time; but Mrs. Gray and I have laid in a stock of 
health and vigor, corporeally, and have filled our 
heads with such interesting memories! This and such 
constant changes of scene have produced the illusion 
I refer to, through which, as through a haze, I dimly 
discern last summer. But out of that haze your 
bright and kindly faces look undimmed. 
Did I tell you (1 think I did) of the pleasant fort- 
night here in September, when guests at Hooker’s ; 
when for botany I worked up Oxytropis; when De 
Candolle and wife were here, and Bentham — serene 
old man — dined with us almost every day; of our 
crossing one bright day to Paris, and all that? .. . 
Thence, abandoning, from lateness of the season, the 
plan of returning through Auvergne, we came on quick 
via Nimes, Lyons, etc., to Paris. 
There Mrs. Gray and I passed three very busy and 
very charming weeks ; also doing some good botanical 
work, and having a good time with Decaisne and the 
