
          Carolinian botany than I ever expect to be, and is in other respects
well deserving the honor.

Of Houstonia and Viburnum I have a consideral number 
of species, and will avail myself of the earliest opportunity to
examine my collection in reference to your enquiries concerning them
and will lay aside for you whatever specimens I think can aid
you in your studies of them. I avow however that I am
somewhat surprized to hear that you have arrived at the
conclusion that H. [Houstonia] longifolia and H. purpurea (varians, Mx. [Michaux]) are 
the same; for I confess that I have always considered them essentially
distinct. They are both frequent in my range and I have had
no difficulty in determining them; but I must confess that I have
never subjected them to a very rigid scrutiny or comparison.
Indeed my time heretofore has been rather devoted to a
collection and preservation of plants, than to these minute examinations;
hence many of those "desperate microscopical distinctions"
as Mr. Nuttall calls them, on which modern genera and species are
founded, have escaped me. However, I agree with you entirely
in the greater propriety of merging questionable differences in one
species rather than creating new ones on insufficient grounds.

I sincerely feel for you in the labour which awaits you
in the great tribe of Compositae and wish most sincerely it were
in my power to aid you in it. I can only do so, however, by laying
my collection before you and in addition to those which I have
already sent you I will lay aside such other species as I think may
be acceptable to you. Among them you will find a very pretty
blue-flowered species of Eupatorium which I rec'd from Dr. [Josiah] Hale, of
        