
          Monday Morning. 


 Sprague has been at work for a day or two,
 has just got his hand in, and is producing 
 some beautiful work. I have got my lectures 
 blocked out, so that I do not feel great anxiety 
 about them, not enough I fear, for I should do 
 better if I could get up more heat, so as to work harder 
 at them, but that is wearing.


 My visit to Oakes was chiefly to this intent. 
 You know that I have been waiting & waiting for 
 Oakes to give (not his New England Flora, which I fear
 he will always leave unfinished) but a prodromus of
 it, for my use & for New England. The consequence 
 of waiting is that Wood is just taking the market, 
 vile and worthless as his Flora is, [crossed out: both] against my B.T.B. [Botanical Text-Book]
 mostly by the means of his Flora. Letters from 
 Hitchcock & elsewhere all point to the probability that 
 they will have to use his book (of which by the way
 he is preparing a 2nd edition, which he cannot but
 improve), and ask me to prevent it, by appending 
 a brief descr. [description] of New England or Northern plants to
 my B.T.B. [Botanical Text-Book]. A plan has occurred to me by 
 which this might be done, were it not that I will 
 not tread on the heels of anything that Oakes (who has 
 devoted a life of labor to this end) will actually do. 


 As something must be done at once, I have proposed 
 to Oakes, to make myself the necessary Conspectuses of 
 Orders, Analyses &c. to join the proposed thing on (or to 
 dufftail (?dove-tail) it into the Text Book, and also
 to furnish the generic characters, and he is to write 
 the specific characters, & all that for New England plants. 
        