... Yes, I read with interest and approval your article on Hypothesis.
I am pressed with work now all this week. I would send you the proofs of Newcomb’s article,[106] but you will get it in the “Independent” almost as soon.
Read, mark, and tell me what I should say. I must now lay myself out on this matter. If you will allow, I want to drop, throw out, praying for the weather quoad weather.
I shall take my time, but shall be turning the matter in my mind, at the end of this week and beginning of the next.
Perhaps I may see you on Monday here, unless I am called away.
TO A. DE CANDOLLE.
Cambridge, January 24, 1879.
My dear De Candolle,—I have just returned from Washington, where I had to read a memorial of our late secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Professor Henry,[107] and I have returned somewhat crippled by lumbago. I took with me your pleasant letter of the 29th December, intending to write to you from there, but I found no time. The present moment is opportune, as I cannot well move about as I must do in my ordinary work....
I have sent for Saporta’s book, and shall study it with interest. Glad I am that your “Phytographie” is in hand. I wish I had it now before me; for I have now to write something on the subject for a new edition of my “Botanical Text-Book,” now in hand.
How well Bentham still writes and works! Notice his essay on Euphorbiaceæ. You and Bentham have kept orthodox views of nomenclature at the fore in Europe, and I have seconded them here, so that, except among cryptogamists, heterodoxy makes no headway.