
          Cambridge. Monday May [in another pen a series of dates -
 crossed out : 1830, crossed out: 1849, May 1848]


 My dear friend


 I ought long before to have
 answered your very kind letter of the 12th, for
 which I cordially thank you. The constant
 pressure on my time and unexpected engagements
 alone have prevented me.


 My object now is to say that not long
 since I received a letter from Sullivant, on his return
 from washington to [?] urging me to take up the
 Expl. Exped. plants that are still left, to which
 I returned my very encouraging answer. Later I received
 another, which is still unanswered, and
 Friday evening & Saturday Wilkes came to see
 me on the subject. I have offered if he
 sends me a written expression of his wish to that
 effect, to go on to Washington to see the collections
 and make , as received, a proposition on that point.
 He wishes me to superintend the general arrangement
 and plan of the whole botanical publication: and
 [crossed out: then] also to set about the rest of the plants as much
 portion I as I prefer or cannot put out to other
 hands.


 I tell him that if I do it I must be
 well enough paid to enable me to take a
 curator to do the mechanical of half mechanical
 work that encumbers me, and to relinquish to
 a tutor or to another professor a part of my present
 college work, in which of course I shall have   

        