I fear you are driven up hard also, by the sickly season and cholera. I hope you may be able to give up practice by and by....
I have had for a good while a misunderstanding with Captain Wilkes about my work for the Exploring Expedition botany. It is now made up, I think, or nearly, but I have had no pay from them for a long time, and they are a year behind in paying. I have got manuscript of several families all ready for the press, and some fine drawings. I am just now working up “Plantæ Wrightianæ,” 1851 collection, up to end of Compositæ, old stopping-place, but must dash beyond that soon....
TO W. J. HOOKER.
Cambridge, December 4, 1852.
Here is a discovery! I have to-day received by post from Dr. J. F. Beaumont, of Mountain Home, in the upper part of Alabama, specimens of a Trichomanes, which he finds growing there under shelving rocks. I send you herewith the half of what is sent me, knowing you will be much interested in the discovery, for the first time, of a Trichomanes in the United States; and thinking that you will probably pronounce it to be a form of the T. radicans, though so much smaller than my Irish and West Indian specimens.... I have not specimens enough of T. radicans to satisfy myself entirely, and refer the question to your experienced judgment. Pray give me your opinion, for the addition of a single species to our few ferns, and especially one of this group, is a matter of moment to us, and worthy of a published notice.
I should not be so greatly surprised now if Hymenophyllum ciliatum, credited by Willdenow to Virginia, should turn up, but I still think there was some mistake about that; and I could find no specimen in Willdenow’s herbarium when I sought for it, in 1839....
Next Wednesday’s steamer, which takes this letter, will also take, for a short European tour, my good father-in-law, Mr. Loring, with Mrs. Loring, and Mrs. Gray’s brother Charles. A rather sudden determination, but we have strongly urged the journey ever since the death of their dear little boy, the little Benjamin, who seemed given to be the comfort and stay of their declining years, who was born just before our return home, a year ago last summer. The rest and change are needful to Mr. Loring, also, from being worn down by his long-continued labors at the bar, of which he is perhaps the leader in Boston; I am confident it will be of great benefit to him; and the Old World has much to interest a man of his refined taste.... And then Kew Garden is to them one of the wonders of the world, as well as a place with which they have, through us, so many pleasant associations. Should you wish them to enjoy the privilege of seeing the Gardens under your own kind auspices, would you notify Mr. Loring through Boott (for I do not now know what will be their London address), of a day that would be agreeable and convenient to yourself....
January 4, 1853.
Wright will now soon be off in Ringgold’s North Pacific Surveying Expedition, to explore Behring Straits, Kurile Islands, the coast of Japan, if possible, and to winter at the Sandwich Islands.
So we shall have no more New Mexican plants from him.