
          Ansd [Answered] May 19


 Lancaster Feby [February] 26th 1856


 My Dear Friend:


 Your esteemed favor of 20th Feby [February] is duly
 received, and I hasten to answer. I observe you have mixed my
 yuccas & labels. But first with regard to the discrepancy on my
 journal &.C. [etc.] Camp 83 A. is the 83rd from Albuquerque. We put
 up at this camp on the evening of the 9th of March.  The specimen
 of Yucca that I put up there, I presume, was on the morning of the 
 10th before leaving this camp, and was collected the day before.
 My journal for the 10th of March, was made at Camp 84, and I find
 noted that I collected "absolutely nothing" for this day. My specimen,
 though labelled the 10th, was collected on the 9th. You are right
 about its being on the Mojave. You are right, also, about 
 my first noticing this tree on Bill Williams Fork Feby [February] 5th. It is the
 same species, and the same as the figure made by Lieut. [Lieutenant] Ives.
 The principal difficulty with the figure, with me, is that the branches
 are represented too erect; yet if I remember rightly, there is
 considerable variety in this respect. We saw this Yucca in a 
 few localities on Bill William Fork, but after crossing the Colorado,
 and until we approach the Sierra Nevada, it is very common,
 growing in some instances 30 feet or more high. The "branch of 
 old inflorescences bearing some remains of capsules", [drawing: part of a plant] is the
 Cajon plant, gathered March 16th 1854. The label is misplaced.
 This is the plant of which I was in doubt, whether it was Agave
 or Yucca. The scape is 5 or 6 feet high, and the leaves about 10-
 12 inches long. The fresh capsule, with thin black seeds, is from 
 the same. Those leaves with rough margins, (whole leaf indeed scabrous)
 with broad dilated base, are from the tree yucca. The one you
 sketched, is a young leaf from a branch of the tree yucca, just
 beginning to swell for flowering, and are the primary leaves
 of the inflorescences. It was put into the herbary with no special
 object, & probably therefore not labeled. It was torn to pieces by some
 of our men, & must have been put up for curiosity merely, as
 it affords no characters.


 In a box, mostly of Cactaceae, that was lost for a time

        