Ree. Nov. ?U t iP66 Breslau, Oct. 26, 1866 



Ans. Dec. 29 H 7*\< * 



(date appears with signature) 



Most esteemed Sir Doctor ! 



Pully ten ye^R have flown by since you visited your land of birth the 



last tlme, and I had the pleasure to get aquainted with you. You ful - 



filled "l&hen your promise, to get to ne your precious work about the 



cacti of the United States, and in all that time my soull feit strickerr 



with p-uilt, that I have still not thanked you for this valuable gift. 



But I have been prevented" fron this duty through my mi^ratory life as 



a soldier-, through numerous business in the line of duty, and not in a 



small way through the care and Observation: of my own plant s. In recent 1 



years however I delayed the execution of my duty to thank, because I 



myself was occupied with a scientific work. This has now been completed 



to a major part, and, e^closed, I send you the sectiorr, which has been 



conpleted so far., 



Our most esteemed ^riend and patron of both of u.s, prinoe Salrrr, . 



has since passed into the other world, unf ortunately , f or his frie?ids 



and science much too early. . The last work which he publi shed , was a 



dissertation in the Banjalandia. ,a systematic Organization of the 



Agavae of his Warden. As I too occupied myself for some time with this 



family, his work interested me extraord inarly," and shortly before pub- 



lication o^ his work A certain professor C. Koch in Berlin found him- 



in the 



seif inclined to publish a sketch 1 about the A^avae/ßerlin weekly f or 

 ffbrticulture a^d Plant Science, carryim e^tirely < the character of the 

 author, that of superficial! ty and onesidedness, I decided" to dare my- 

 self the Organization of the Agavae, , based on long years of Observation 

 of the Agavae in various gardens and the culture of a not insignifi- 

 cant collection of my own on the basis of the System of divisions ac- 

 cepted by prince Salm. Besides a sound knowledge of the pla^ts on the 

 Dy er, there was available to me the collections in the Berlin botani- 

 cal Garderr, probably now. the most important in the eastern herai sperre, 



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