.KT. 71.] TO SIR EDWARD FRY. 731 



highest-class daily papers are little better than the 

 lowest. I suppose the telegraph reporting for the 

 press is all done by one set of men, and the more sen- 

 sational the reports the more welcome to the papers, 

 which, with few exceptions, print without any selec- 

 tion or discrimination. 



I have settled down to my work with enjoyment, 

 but with a growing sense of discouragement growing 

 out of an embarras de richesses. It was natural to 

 find here a great accumulation of collections of North 

 American plants, all needing examination ; but unfor- 

 tunately, they continue to come in faster than I can 

 study and dispose of them. This comes from the 

 increasing number of botanical explorers, and the 

 new facilities offered to them by new railroads along 

 our southwestern frontiers and other out-of-the-way 

 regions. The consequence is, that while new and in- 

 teresting things are pouring in, which one must attend 

 to, and which are very enjoyable, I do not get ahead 

 with the steady and formidable work of the " North 

 American Flora." I begin to think it were a happier 

 lot to have the comparatively completed botany of an 

 old country to study, in which your work " were done 

 when 't were done," and in which, even if It were not 

 done quickly, you were not called on to do it over and 

 over, to bring the new into shape and symmetry with 

 the old. 



By the way, I finally wrote out an article on a ques- 

 tion which you once treated, and upon which we more 

 than once conversed, taking for my text a paragraph 

 in Lubbock's address at York last summer. I had 

 partly promised Mr. Walter Browne to write it, so I 

 sent it to him ; and as a proof from the " Contempo- 

 rary Review " has come back to me, I suppose it may 



