Madi son ,Wis . ,December 7 . 1888 . 



My dear Deane:-- 



We 11, we 11; what lax correspondents we are getting' to be. 

 You let my letter go unanswered for two mcnths and now I have done 

 as badly by you. Who would have believed it ? 



Busy ? Itve been so busy lately that I could hardly tell whether 

 I was on my head or my heels, without stopping to think about it. With 

 my usual procrastinating policy I put off making the index of the 

 Gazette by numbers, as it came, so that I have had the whole of the year 

 to do at once. 



Then I have offered a course in experimental vegetable physiol- 

 ogy this year, and, as I have no handbook at command in this subject, 

 I have been compelled to prepare a schedule of experiments myself. 

 Fortunately I have a copy of Detmer's Pf lanzen-phy siologisches Prak- 

 tikum lately issued , and by translating the experiments in that (such 

 as were suitable) and by picking out additional ones from Sachs' Exper 

 imental-Pf lanzenphysiologie jGoodale' s Praxis and Vines' Lectures, I 

 have* succeeded in keeping the class busy so far. Fortunately too, the 

 class is small and its personnel such that I can practice on it with- 

 out detriment. Several nights , however , I have had to work well toward 

 morning to get another sheet of experiments ready. 



I remember telling you about ordering a lot of books, but I can 

 not have told you of their arrival just before college opened. The 

 most useful things in the lot are the sets of the Botanische Zeitung 



