I have seen, but not read, Mr. Forbes’s “Travels in Eastern Archipelago.” Those who have read it here say it is very interesting. We have a great lot of his dried plants from Sumatra and Java, unnamed, which at odd hours I am arranging for the herbarium. I hope that in his new journey he will manage to make better specimens. But, as he is primarily an entomologist, this can hardly be expected. But, if I rightly understand, he goes out now with a good backing and probably better conveniences for collecting than he could have had before.
We have been, and still are, much interested in English politics and election excitements. You are having very anxious times, indeed. What a pity that some one party, that is, one of the two great parties, is not strong enough, and homogeneous enough, to command the situation for the time being, and to deal independently of Parnell, or, indeed, of Chamberlain....
We Americans are wonderfully peaceful—our only real questions now pending are financial, and those not yet treated as they ought to be, on party lines. We have an awful silver craze; but we hope to arrest it before it comes to the worst, though sense and argument are at present ineffectual.
We have a comfortable trust in the principle that “Providence specially protects from harm the drunken, the crazy, and the United States of America.”
I see our friend Professor Thayer now and then. He is well and flourishing. Mrs. Gray and I are very well indeed, and we send our most cordial good wishes to you all.
Very sincerely yours,
Asa Gray.
TO J. D. HOOKER.
Cambridge, March 9, 1886.
When I read A. de Candolle’s notice of Boissier, I thought it was “charming.” Anyhow, it brought back to me the charming memory of a very lovable man. I dare say neither De Candolle nor I has done justice to Boissier’s work. I could only touch and go,—make a picture that would just sketch the kind of man he was.
... Yes, I have got on Ranunculaceæ, and have done up to and through Ranunculus, minus the Batrachium set, of which happily we have few in North America, that we know of. But having done some while ago the Gamopetalæ of Pringle’s interesting North Mexican collection, I am now switched off to the same in a hurried collection made by Dr. Palmer, in an unvisited part of Chihuahua, in which very much is new. One after another those Mocino[136] and Sessé plants turn up. Also those of Wislizenus, whom the Mexicans for a time interned on the flanks of the Sierra Madre.