St. Louis May 30, 1866 



Honored Friend, 



I went now carefully through your descriptions of Cacti, 

 after I had also received your seeds« These interested ne a rrreat 

 deal, and I have really very little to add. . Your descriptioir off 

 the plants» Statement of dimensions» f lo r -rering position» f lower t , 

 fruit and seeds are mostly sufficient, and you are up to now the 

 only person to have made good use of the opportun! ty to observe 

 these strande plants on their native soll, acc Ording to the de - 

 mands of today* s science« May-be you could have mentioned the 

 State of the wood after destruction of the noist parts. Only of 

 one do you mention the explosion of the fruit (Tetejo) , which does 

 occur with C, giganteus , the others apparertly do not burst. The 

 associated Cacti and wild plants could have been provided in nore 

 detail; only once do you mention the region for sugarcane« 



It becomes apparent f^on your exact description of floxrer 

 and fruit , that there is quite a runber of of externally sinilar 

 but no st likely very different columnar cacti • 



You have seen yourself that Piloce^eus cannot be geneti- 

 cally seuarated fron Cereus , a^d sA%d. so, and sreeies nay be found 

 with smaller or hardly noticeable beard and thus form the trans- 

 i t i on t o the c ommon f on n s • 



Your Cerei with flowers at the summit I cannot stomach. 

 You too, as I am, are also quite dubious. Could this be the ter- 

 minals of old twigs» possibly of the p^eceding year, which instead 

 of continuing prrowth in the current year,set flowers ? If you 

 have the Chance» please examine this point further. 



By the way, no place exlstS and least here w junior in 

 vesta magistrl*. Our teachers in the knowledjre of cacti are 

 dwarfs, not excepting the ^est, because they did not have the na- 



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