No specimens scarcely of Cactaceæ in collection Exploring Expedition,—a drawing or two. I shall send them on to you presently....
I grieve to tell you that Adrien de Jussieu is dead. Cancer in the stomach, his tedious malady proves to have been. It makes a deep impression on the scientific men, and the public, too, in Paris. He was much my most intimate correspondent in France, a true friend, and a charming man.
You know, perhaps, that Moquin-Tandon has succeeded the late Achille Richard at L’Ecole de Médecine. Tulasne, I suppose, will be the new professor at the Jardin des Plantes; at least he ought to be, as he is the most able man.
No farther news since my last.
Agassiz looks poorly and says he is not well....
I never could get Fouquiera up. To-day I have sown some seeds, and put on my own table, by the window, to watch....
18th August.
Agassiz handed me your note about the Compass plant. I took him at once into the Garden, to see Silphium laciniatum, terebinthinaceum, and pinnatifidum.
He agreed there was no direction to be made out, one way more than another. The cauline leaves all tend to become vertical (as in several other Compositæ), but present neither face nor edge north.
But three years ago Lapham of Wisconsin wrote me that, though the plant near Milwaukee showed no “polarity” (and so he never believed in it), yet on going farther west, on the prairies, he found it did generally turn all to the north there.