124 FIRST JOURNEY IN EUROPE. [1839, 



and Oregon plants sent down to his house, and has 

 supplied me as well as he could; and a valuable par- 

 cel I shall have of them. . . . 



I have seen considerable of Brown, and like him 

 much better than I thought, although he is certainly- 

 peculiar. The day we breakfasted with him we re- 

 mained until four P. M., and he offered to show anything 

 I wished at the British Museum. He showed us all 

 Bauer's drawings in his possession (I have since seen 

 Francis Bauer). He has much more general infor- 

 mation than I supposed ; is full of gossip, and has a 

 great deal of dry wit. 



He is growing old fast, and I suspect works very 

 little now, and I fear there is not very much more 

 work now to be expected of him. He knows every- 

 thing ! . . . 



I spent a good part of yesterday with Bentham, and 

 was to have met Hooker at the Geological Society in 

 the evening ; but botany prevailed and I stayed with 

 Bentham, and was a little sorry afterwards, as I 

 should have seen at the society WheweU ! Daubeny ! 

 Chantry the sculptor, etc. — I have bought a colored 

 copy of Wallich's " Plantse Asiaticae Rariores," 3 

 vols. foL, very fme, for £15 ; the publishing price 

 was i£36, — the present price by Henry Bohn, who 

 has bought up not only this but almost every other 

 expensive British work on natural history, is £26. It 

 is not yet come round from Edinburgh. I will soon 

 send it to you. ... I have seen the " Atakta Bo- 

 tanica " of Endlicher, where there is a plate of Un- 

 gnadia (not Ungnodia, as spelled in " Companion 

 to the Botanical Magazine "), but no letter-press as 

 yet. . . . 



January 30, Wednesday evening. . . . Yesterday 



