Weber Alb. Fr. 



China, 6 April 1866 



My dear and very honorable Colleague; 



I am starting to believe that the letter that I have addressed to you from Saltillo last 

 November did not arrive or that your answer got lost. These occurrences are by the way so 

 common in this country, that they completely discourage the most amateur regulär 

 correspondent. I would have written you again during the last three months that I spent in 

 Saltillo and Monterrey, but the inseeurity of the post office, made me wait for a more 

 secure occasion to write to you via Matamoros. I then will be able to send you my first 

 series of notes that I told you about in my last letter. 



That occasion that I had foreseen already for some time, has just occurred. I departed from 

 Monterrey the 29th of March with the brigade traveling through the north of Tamaulipas 

 and Nuevo Leon. I believe that during our travels we will be close to Matamoros where I 

 will safely be able to send you this letter, that I will mail in Brownsville. I will unite the 

 notes that I have already written and that for the present time concern only the Cierge 

 columnaris that I have oberved until now. This first remittance will be for you a specimen 

 prepared in my usual way. As soon as time permits, I will follow this dispatch with others 

 in which I will try to condense the numerous, disjointed and frequently incomplete 

 observations that I have made on the Cacti. Your comments and your critique are for me 

 of great value, because I have here few bibliographic resources. 

 In the meantime in the region that have traveled, at this time, your research has left me 

 very little to glean at, because nearly all the species that I have encountered here, have 

 already been described by you, with such care, that there is rarely anything that I can add. 

 Unfortunately I have only 3 of your publications on the subject. These are: 

 Bound Comm. Report 

 Pacific Railroad Report 



Synopsis of Cacti of the US and adjacent regions. 



I had planned to send you at a later date, the itinerary of my travels in Mexico with a 

 description of the species of cacti that I have encountered in each locality. These 

 itineraries will be interesting specially from the point of view of the geographic 

 distribution of the families. I always have tried to make them as exact as possible. At this 

 time I find myself in a region that is well known to you and I again find here all the 

 species described by you as growing in the Valley of the Rio Grande. Since Monterrey I 

 found along the route the following species: 

 Echinocactus Texensis (common) 

 Echin.longihamatus (short stems and weak thorns). 

 Echin. Setispinus hamatus. 



