... I finish Lichens this afternoon; and have next two lectures on Fungi and spontaneous generation to give. I interweave a good deal of matter, such as, on Ferns, the part they played in the early times of the world, à la Brongniart. Mosses, filling up lakes and pools; Sphagnum, Peat. Lichens, first agents in clothing rocks with soil. I have noble illustrations of rust in wheat, ergot, etc., and Sprague is now hard at work on smut, à la Bauer.
You remember the letter I sent you from Prestele of “Ebenezer, near Buffalo,” and which you still hold. Well, he has sent me for inspection a most superb set of drawings, both of cultivated and of some native plants, exceedingly well done. Also specimens of his work in cutting on stone, which he does admirably. He did the work in Bischoff’s “Terminology,” which perhaps you remember, two quarto volumes. What a pity he did not have the State-Flora plates to execute!
If Dr. Beck and yourself go on with your plan, he is your man to engrave the plates on stone. Our Illicium is now in full flower; but I cannot spare Sprague a moment to draw it yet; unless, indeed, it is quite certain you will want it this year, when I would try. He must work hard for me two weeks longer....
My cutting up of “Vestiges of Creation” was a fine blow, and told. Peirce, who you know was rather inclined to favor Rogers a while ago, is now sound and strong. We think of sending a critical analysis of the first part of Mulder, as our joint work (if he finds time to put in form the physiological deductions I give him), to the meeting of geologists and naturalists at New Haven next month.
Mulder is very ingenious; but we can blow up the whole line of his arguments, and show that it all amounts to nothing; that he has not in this advanced our knowledge a particle; and that his generalizations are unsound. Why did you not have a part of my article reprinted in New York? That would be the best reply to all his stuff.
The printing of my book will be through next week.
March 30.
I am now half through, and have got almost done with Fungi. The audience take so much to the “Cryptogamic matters,” especially the afternoon audience, which is as a whole the most intelligent and refined, that I let them run on, and they will occupy the whole course, except three lectures. I gave one lecture, generally thought nearly the best, on the large Fungi, mushrooms, truffles, morels, puff-balls, with some good general matters. To-day I have taken the small ones, moulds, mildews, rust, and smut in wheat, with superb illustrations. Ergot is still left over, along with the diseases in potatoes, the plant of fermentation, the Botrytis that kills silk-worms, with some recapitulatory matters on spontaneous generation, which must be cooked up for Friday. Then comes Algæ; the large proper ones (Lecture 8), of which a fine series of illustrations is now nearly done.
Lecture 9. Then the low, minute forms and Confervæ come, and gory dew, red snow, superbly illustrated, ending with diatoms, transitions to corallines through sponge, etc., and the locomotive spores of Confervæ, Zoösporæ.
Lecture 10. Whole subject of spontaneous movements and sensibility in flowering plants, the life of plants, etc. (treated in a somewhat original way), and the real differences between plants and animals.