So do not you “growl” at me now if you can help it....
Alas, your Algæ will be too late for dear Harvey. He is dying of consumption, and we may hear of the end any day. This is all at present from
Your old, worn-out friend,
Asa Gray.
TO GEORGE BENTHAM.
June 12, 1866.
We have as many asters as we can manage in America, and in the northern hemisphere of the Old World. I pray you keep out at least Australian things if it be possible.
I envy you more and more in being able to devote yourself to systematic botany steadily, without the distraction and sad consumption of time in professional and administrative duties and avocations, which make havoc of the opportunities of most botanists, and make their work which they are able to do far less valuable than it would otherwise be. And you work on with such quiet determination! The lamented losses of the last year or two have already made you the Nestor, though I cannot think you old. I do hope you have a fair number of good working years yet, in which you can make your great experience tell to utmost advantage....
Much against my will, I have this summer to work upon a new edition of my “Manual of the Northern United States Botany,” to which there is much to be done. I shall not, however, so recast the work as I should if I could defer it till I had blocked out the outlines of a similar but much larger volume for all the United States of America, and till your “Genera Flora” had been carried much farther.
What do you intend for this summer? A Continental excursion?
Ever, my dear Bentham, most cordially yours,