242 THE CORRESPONDENCE OF SCHWEINITZ AND TORREY 
me a few days—I know it would prove a matter of the utmost 
importance to me, & might afford me some chance of useful 
interchange. I am glad to learn, that you are arranging your 
herbarium—don’t forget me & my desiderata in so doing. I 
must confess I am almost in despair about my botanical exchanges 
just now. Within the last three weeks I have with great exertion 
made up large packages for Dr. Hooker, & Mr. Greville & for- 
warded them to Mr. Bininger by the Brunswic{k] stage. They 
have not arrived I hear at New York, & are probably lost. I fear 
as much for a package of several hundred North Carol|ina] plants 
forwarded since to our friend Mr. Halsey accompanied with about 
500 Spec. mostly new Fungi, which he was to share with you 
—because I hear nothing from him about their arrival. I am this 
day forwarding another package to Baron Lederer & feel very 
ill at ease to think all these things lost which have cost me so much 
time & labor to collect. The communication of your botani- 
cal plans was to me in the highest degree interesting. If it was 
possible to give me notice a week or two beforehand & to arrange 
a point of meeting, it would be one of the most agreeable things 
I can imagine to accompany you in the excursion on the Jersey 
shore. The coast of Maryland is I think quite a new field.— 
If possible, may I put in a claim to join in the fruits of that ex- 
pedition & still more in that west of the Mississippi—? I would 
be most happy to be considered a contributor to the plan in a 
pecuniary way to the extent of my means. 
The latter part of the winter I have been employed as much as 
my duties allow in writing a new descriptive Synopsis of my Fungi 
[76]—but have not yet got thro’, tho’ nearly, with the monstrous 
genus Sphaeria. It is my purpose to continue—& finish it next 
year, with drawings of all & every new one. What is to become of 
the work when finished I have not yet determined. 
During the whole of last year I have been very unfortunate in 
my desire to encrease my collection. Not one of the foreign sup- 
plies promised has come in—& at the best season for doing some- 
thing personally—indeed during an attempt—I was seized by an 
indisposition which utterly incapacitated me. When recovered— 
& a fine prospect arising—my duty obliging me to travel to the 
North West Corner of the State on Lake Erie. Untoward cir- 
