I have written a much longer letter than I had intended when I began.
Believe me to remain, yours very faithfully,
Asa Gray.
TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.
Cambridge, July 14, 1853.
My dear Engelmann,—This cover has been addressed to you for a long while, but I have delayed to fill and close it, not so much because you had not written, for I knew you must be very busy now, but because the convenient time has not exactly come. For I have been very busy. College work done up only last week; printing of “Exploring Expedition Botany,” in which I have read proofs up to 220 pages, and gave to-night finished manuscript (except a few crooked points to settle in a family or two) up to the end of Rosaceæ (which will make about 450 pages. It fills up fast with the open pages adopted in these reports). I shall carry on the volume to 550 or 650 pages, and the plates folio, already 56, shall carry up to 100, if I can. There is next some tough work in Myrtaceæ and Melastomaceæ; but as to the latter Naudin has much cleared the way. Those done, and I think I may venture to work part of the time on the Lindheimer, Fendler, and Wright Monopetalæ.
Agassiz returned most delighted with his visit to you, and we talked much of you....
I am afraid to touch Gregg’s Mexican plants, for fear of the time they would consume. In “Exploring Expedition,” I branch out little or none, except a few notes in Malvaceæ, and probably more in Compositæ.
If I could do the work abroad, I could work up collateral things most advantageously; but the means here at disposal are too poor.
Still, you will be pleased with my volume i. when I finish and send it to you (the letterpress this fall!).