
          Prof. [Professor] John Torrey, N. Y. [New York]


 Dear Sir,


 I thank you very much for the corrections and improvements
 made by you so obligingly to Eriogonum, Euphorbia and
 obione, I have ordered in Washington ten extra copies of Plantae
 Heermannianae; will you be so good as to retain for me ten extra
 sets of plates. My copy of Decandole's last volume has not
 come to hand as yet; I expect it very anxiously to make out
 the sixty odd species [added: of Eriogonum] now in the Academy herbarium.


 I have been out of occupation for the whole winter
 at the Academy of Natural Sciences. My room had no fire
 and I cannot work in it. My task with herbarium borelin
 americanam is completed. I stop at cyperaciae. A young 
 genetleman of this city, who has studied three years in Germany
 and devoted his attention to cyperacae and graminaoe, will
 take up these two families and Mr James the Cryotgams,


 This herbarium, when completed, will be, after yours Dr Gray's
 the largest collection of North American plants. I have poured out
 in it from my own herb. more than 1500 of my rarest specimens; but
 I must say that here is all my pride: to enrich this public herbarium,
 even at the expense of my own. I have every hope to add considerably
 more to it. Dr Heermann had been settled in Texas, these 3 years 
        