
          Steamer James Robb


 June 13. 1853


 Dear Doctor -


 I expect to be at Napoleon
 in the morning where I am in expectation
 of letters from you. I write now because
 I will have more leisure on board a
 pleasant steamer than when in the great
 bustle of preparation for our long travels
 across the plains. I spent parts of the 
 2 or 3 last days with Dr. Engelmann looking
 over our collections of Cactaceae and
 getting items for more. In the botany
 sent home to you are some diminutive
 looking stems flowers and I think some orange
 colored fruit of a cylindric opuntia 
 gathered on the Rio Grande near the Ca�on
 between the 15th and 18th of June 1852.
 There were come peculiarities about the
 fruit flowers & stems giving it an appearance
 somewhat different from the vaginata
 or frutescens with which it was 
 associated. Will you please have 
 the kindness to send some of the stem, spines
        