TO W. J. HOOKER.
Cambridge, March 28, 1854.
I send a glass bottle filled with the pulp and seed of Cereus giganteus as gathered by the natives, and used for food, the same as what I formerly sent you a small quantity of in a letter, trusting the seeds would grow, as they are not subjected to heat in making this jam.
I have some pieces of the wood of the great Wellingtonia tree, which I estimate to be not older probably than the Christian era. Torrey has no fruit, nor have I; but there are some cones in Philadelphia. The wood is very like that of the red-wood, i. e., Taxodium sempervirens. I hope we shall get the male flowers, but I have no correspondent in California, and Torrey no very good or energetic ones.
How hard it is to believe that there is a European war! I trust it will be short. Some of our own people are behaving very badly about Cuba, but it is mostly talk for effect, and will lead to nothing, we hope.
TO GEORGE THURBER.
Cambridge, 20th April, 1854.
Dear Thurber,—When yours of the 17th arrived, and till now, I have been too much absorbed in college duties to consider it, as I now rapidly will.
Ranunculus 441. I never liked naming a plant after a person who has had nothing to do with it, as collector, describer, and nothing else; therefore do not like R. Huntiana. We will wait for some other mode of complimenting Mr. Hunt. Moreover, I have hit on a name which pleases me tolerably, viz., R. hydrocharoides, which, by your leave, we will adopt.
Thurberia specific name? That is a question to consider, and no very pat name at once applicable both to the species and the discoverer occurs to me.