PAEIS FEIENDSHIPS 185 
as he is in all that concerns Botany. I think I have reasoned 
him out of this or shall have before long, for he is both modest 
and open to reason. 
His drawings of the genera of Algae are wonderfully 
numerous and beautiful ; I often thought how numerous 
your exclamations of come hella would have been, had you 
seen them. 
The Botanists here have not ceased being kind to me, and 
such a three weeks of being lionised I never at all expected. 
I am quite aware that this is owing to my bearing your name, 
but so far out of sight as you are, it was very unexpected. 
Were it not that the style of living— (or rather killing one- 
self) here is very prejudicial, I should wish you to come here 
one spring, but I am sure you would be made ill, as I have 
been, and only recovered by dint of sticking to Seine water 
and letting vin ordinaire alone. This was a fortnight ago, 
and my poisoner was M. Gay, who eternally complained of 
the badness of his dinner, and made Webb ^ and me eat and 
especially drink more than we liked by dint of a similar 
pressing to what you underwent in Ireland. The poor man 
evidently thought us great guests, and that we were too 
proud for his table perhaps. . . . 
{February 27.) . . . Humboldt I saw very often, some- 
times three times a day, for he was never tired of coming to 
ask me questions about my voyage ; he certainly is still a 
most wonderful man, with a sagacity and memory and 
capability for generalising that are quite marvellous. I 
gave him my book, which delighted him much ; he read 
through the first three numbers, and I suppose noted down 
thirty or forty things which he asked me particulars about. 
I left him at the third number, and as he paid me two visits 
whilst I was out on the morning I left, he has doubtless not 
digested it all. I bade him three goodbyes the day before 
1 Philip Barker Webb (1793-1854) of Milford House, Surrey, early came into 
a fortune which enabled him to travel and pursue his studies in geology and 
botany. His observations on the Troad and his Iter Hispaniense were followed 
by his work on Madeira and the Canaries, where he spent 1828-30 with Berthe- 
lot, a young Frenchman who had already been eight years studying the islands. 
In 1833 they established themselves in Paris, where their great work, Histoire 
naiurelle des lies Canaries took fourteen years to produce (1836-50). The 
years 1848-50 he spent botanising in Italy, as a sequel to which he left his large 
collections and herbarium to the museum at Florence, then under his friend 
Parlatore. 
