328 A DECADE OF WORK AT HOME.  [1845, 
not interfere with Frémont’s botanical plans, while the 
results would redound to Frémont’s advantage. He is 
a most amiable, quiet, and truly gentlemanly fellow, 
retiring to a fault, but full of nerve, and surely is to 
e the great man of this country in the highest 
branches of zodlogy and comparative anatomy. 
therefore very strenuously solicit your influence at 
court in his behalf 
Tam glad that Frémont takes so much personal in- 
terest in his botanical collections. He will do all the 
more. I should like to see his plants, especially the 
Composite and Rosacee. As to Conifers he should 
ave the Taxodium sempervirens, so imperfectly 
known, and probably a new genus. Look quick at it, 
for it is probably in Coulter’s collection which Harvey 
is working at... . Cordially yours, 
. Gray. 
February 12, 1845. 
My first lecture is to-day finished, and has this 
evening been read to Mr. Albro.! Half of it is de- 
voted to a serving up of ‘“ Vestiges of Creation” (which 
Boott says is written by Sir Richard Vivian), show- 
ing that the objectionable conclusions rest upon 
tuitous and unwarranted inferences from estab- 
lished or probable facts. Peirce is examining Mul- 
der,” that we may fairly get at his point of view. His 
conclusions as to equivocal generation are non-constat 
from his own premises. On the whole series of sub- 
jects Peirce — who is much pleased with the way I 
1 This was Dr. Gray’s second course of Lowell lectures. Dr. John 
A. Albro, the Congregationalist minister of Cambridge, was his pas- 
og 
G. J. Mulder, 1802-1880; professor of chemistry in the University 
of aac Wrote on Animal and Vegetable Physiology. 
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