
          unknown. You may also add, that 
 while you refuse to fetter yourself with any 
 such engagement and responsibilities as he proposes. 
 You will very cheerfully [crossed out: promise to] give 
 your advice when asked for by Breckenridge 
 or Pickering (!) or Sullivant (to whom the
 Mosses are I am told to be assigned) free gratis, 
 only providing of course that your expenses are 
 to be paid if you are asked to go to Washington 
 or elsewhere. But that you will not 
 promise to advise on any such general
 engagement with persons unknown and 
 in regard to matters which he cannot 
 specify, but prefer to surrender a 
 large part of [crossed out: which] what is a fair price 
 for the work, and what they must of
 necessity give to any one else, if you decline 
 whom they can possibly get to do it, always
 excepting my self, who will haves nothing 
 to do with a matter from which you retire. 


 I repeat my opinion, that the study 
 and whole preparation for the press of the 
 collections in question will be [added: (to us)] remarkably 
 easy work, much easier, indeed than writing 
 the Flora of any one of our States, because 
 not complicated with old difficulties & entanglements. 
 Very few things are new, all are plain 
 as noon-day. I write in great
        