
          all is explained. It might never have reached me if sent
 as you intended, but why did you keep it a month when
 there were a dozen good vessels that sail'd during that time
 for Liverpool besides some for Havre? It might just
 as well have come a month sooner as not. For heaven's
 sake get married to Miss [Prince?] or Miss Dickinson or 
 any body else, you will never know what you are about
 till a dose of matrimony, stronger than "poppey [i.e. poppy] or 
 mandragora" has sobered your senses a little.


 You say you wish you had given me some plants to
 compare them Mx's Herbm. [Michaux's Herbarium]. If you want anything of this
 sort done I will attend to it when I return here next spring and
 consult about there some of the oracles at the Garden of Plants.
 But more of this hereafter. I shall perhaps want to draw largely upon
 your stores of plants & minerals if you will have any to spare.


 I am glad to hear that old [Daniel H.] Barnes is so zealous & that
 the books I sent are of use to him. Poor old [Jean-Baptiste] Lamarck is still
 blind and I believe there are no hopes entertained that he
 will ever be able to complete his work. So much the worse.
 Is B. then the only active Zoologist that the Lyceum [of Natural History in New York] has to boast
 of? There is a great deal to be done yet in History of our Animals,
 I sometimes wish I was [crossed out: [there?] home to study them myself, thugh
 if I were I should probably be as idle as formerly.


 I am more grieved than surprised at the ill receipts of
 [Thomas] Nuttall's attempts to get a Botanical Class in N.Y. It must
        