784 FINAL JOURNEYS AND WORK.  [1886, 
Coulter,! but also I find it important to know his 
routes in Mexico and California. 
At Los Angeles, last year, I fell in with one of the 
“old settlers”” who knew him, and who accompanied 
him on that expedition into the Arizona desert on the 
lower Colorado. Mr. Ball will ascertain and let me 
know other particulars of the man, and the date of 
his death, which probably occurred not long after that 
last letter to you, from Paris. 
In various ways I am convinced that I am on the 
verge of superannuation. Still I work on; and now, 
dividing the orders with Mr. Watson (who, though not 
young, is eight or ten years my junior), we are working 
away at the Polypetale of the “Synoptical Flora of 
North America,” with considerable heat and hope. 
But it is slow work! 
Tuckerman, our lichenologist, has gone before us! 
I shall in a few days send you a copy of the memo- 
rial of him which I contributed to the Council report 
of the American Academy of Sciences and am having 
reprinted in the “ American Journal of Science” for 
July. 
My wife is fairly well. . . . She is always busy; 
and we both enjoy life with a zest, being in all re- 
spects very happily situated, particularly in having 
plenty to do. 
Let us hope that you may still be able to give us 
better accounts of Madame de Candolle and of your- 
self ; and believe me to be always, 
Yours affectionately, Asa Gray. 
! Thomas Coulter. Little is known of him. He explored in Mex- 
ico many years and in California in 1831 and 1832. Was appointed 
Curator of the herbarium of the Dublin Botanic Garden, where he 
died in 1843. 
