790 FINAL JOURNEYS AND WORK.  [1887, 
We have been away from Cambridge very little 
this last summer and autumn, only on very short 
visits, or one rather longer one to my birthplace in 
the central portion of New York, where we had a 
family gathering. 
There is a lull just now in your political situation. 
I certainly at your last election should have gone 
against Gladstone! How so many of my country- 
men — I mean thoughtful people — approve of home- 
rule, i. e., of semi-secession, I hardly understand. But 
local government as to local affairs is our strength 
and is what we are brought up to. Also, our safety 
is in that the land —the agricultural land—is so 
largely owned by the tiller. . . . 
We should like to see old friends in England once 
more in the flesh, and the feeling grows so that I may 
feign a scientific necessity, and we may, if we live and 
thrive, cross over to you next summer. At least we 
dream of it, though it may never come to pass. 
TO J. D. HOOKER. 
CAMBRIDGE, January 18, 1887. 
My prar Hooker, — Glad to see the * Botanical 
Magazine” figure of Nymphza flava +.691T. 
There is something not quite right in the history as 
you give it. Leitner was the botanist who showed 
the plant to Audubon, and gave it the name which 
Audubon cites, and he died — was milled by the Flor- 
ida Indians— “half a century ago.” He was the 
“a naturalist” you refer to. 
The whole history and the mode of growth, sto- 
lons, ete., has been repeatedly published here in the 
journals, ete. See Watson’s “ Index ” Supplement, ete. 
Not that this is any matter, even about poor Leitner. 
