
          These instructions I shall beg you to give me, by
 return mail, as I have been subdividing you
 different "Mepes" to-day, & tomorrow I hope to make
 some head-way in sorting, so as to begin to study
 them on Wed'y [Wednesday]. Truly, my good friend, your collec'n
 was (& still is) most emphatically-- "in pi"-- & you are
 a very ingenious gentleman to be able to find out
 what you want, at all, in such a mass of confusion.


 What is that queer looking thing of which you
 have only 1 spec'm [specimen] labelled by [Chester] Dewey C. Nuttallii [Carex nuttallii, a synonym of Carex douglasii]?
 He asks (on the label) your permission to publish it
 in Silliman [Silliman's Journal, i.e. the American Journal of Science and Arts]. Did he do so? & if so, please give me
 the reference. But why is it not noticed in your
 Mon. Cyp. [Torrey's Monograph of North American Cyperaceae] in any way? If he did not publish it,
 has it ever been described? And if not, why not?
 Please tell me all you know about it. I find
 some very, very queer doings of Dewey's, under his
 own hand, dear Man. I am sorry to tell you
 that you are not likely to be pillaged, as I had hoped,
 & for which you were doubtless prepared. So it is,
 however, that amongst the whole lot of those things, I
 believe there is not a species which I do not possess!
 What with collections, from all quarters, & wholesale
 plundering of the "Fisher Professor" I am really very
 rich in Carices [Carex]-- so that you are likely to come off
        