
          I am willing to pull weeds and pick up stones when I can;
but recollect, I am never to be dragged before the public, unless
it is by way of giving my opinion in a questionable case.
My Manual has merit; but it is not that of a botanist.
It is that of a simplifier. Boys and girls understand all
I write. I stand between you great folks and the common
folks, just likea tall Ichabod Crane, when handing
down crockery to a short chubby kitchen girl, from a high
upper shelf. In truth I am not an accurate botanist.
But I do describe plants clearly, with  fewer words than
any other botanist, so as to be understood by mere urchin
and kitchen drabs.

But when you come to geology, take care how you
touch me, or rather how you point at me, for you [crossed out ?]
can't touch me. I have set one foot in the Atlantic 
opposite to Boston and the other in Lake Erie. [permit?]
the Lilliputian tribes to play with pebble stones
between my feet; but nobody must touch a rock
withour my permission.

Lewis Beck has made an appendix to my 4th Ed.
in which he draws in a good deal of fudge stuff, such
as hay and provender from your book. Tell me what
you are about, and what I must say about you
at Amherst College. Tell me always, what new works
in Nat.[Natural] Hist.[History] and Chem.[Chemistry] have appeared, where I can
get them, and how much money [to] send for them.

Yours
Amos Eaton

Dr. J. Torrey

        