April 17, 1880.
We heard only incidentally of your accident, and were very sorry. Do be careful. Don’t climb ladders. Leave that to young fellows like me!...
I am half dead with Aster. I got on very fairly till I got into the thick of the genus, among what I called Dumosi and Salicifolia. Here I work and work, but make no headway at all. I can’t tell what are species and how to define any of them, nor what the nomenclature is, i. e., what are original names.
I will take this group abroad, but it will be just as bad there, unless I can get some settled ideas before I start. I never was so boggled.
To-morrow I’ll sit down and study your Pinus paper, which I have not looked at yet, so absorbed have I been....
My old friend John Carey has died, in England, at eighty-three. Schimper, they say, is dead. They go one by one!
Cambridge, May 8.
First, thanks for your very lively letter of May 4,—auspicious day, being my wedding-day, thirty-second anniversary....
Yes, we mean to go abroad right after the meeting of American Association, say September 4, to finish Aster, etc.; to stay at least a year.
My wife sends best love to you, your daughter, and son, and I join.