zr. 70.] TO MESSRS. REDFIELD AND CANBY. 1138 
other botanists at the garden, with Dr. Cosson and 
M. Lavallée.t Then, as the Hookers could not earry 
out their promise of joining us and going together to 
Italy now, we agreed to defer that till early spring, 
and back we came here for work. We are settled in 
our old lodgings on Kew Green, where we feel quite 
at home, and are near the Hookers and the herbarium ; 
and here I am to polish off the Asteroidez, — some 
very rough surfaces in Aster yet to grind down. We 
should be pleased to hear from you. 
It was at Cordova that I spelled out in Spanish the 
welcome news that the Republicans had carried the 
election, and grandly. 
And now, with Mrs. Gray’s love joined to mine to 
your good wives and children, I am 
Cordially yours, Asa Gray. 
Dr. Gray settled down at Kew for hard work, but 
as the days were very short, and of course the herba- 
rium was closed at dusk, he had long evenings. There 
were many pleasant dinners, among others at Mr. John 
Ball’s, where he met Robert Browning ; and a charm- 
ing visit to Lord Ducie at Tortworth, where he was 
much interested in the fine and rare trees, and had an 
afternoon’s visit to see Berkeley Castle, one of the old- 
est, if not the oldest, of inhabited castles in England. 
He paid another interesting visit to Cambridge, to 
Professor Babington, where he had not been since 
his visit in 1851, and where among others he met 
again Dr. Thompson, then Master of Trinity, who had 
1 Alphonse Lavallée, 1835-1884. Paris. “ His specialty, ornamen- 
tal trees and shrubs, of which he had nearly the largest and best 
collection in Europe, studying them with assiduity” [A. G.]. 
