So they would talk about the tree that was felled being 3,000 years old (and took in Lindley), whereas it was not quite 1,300! It appears to grow much faster than S. sempervirens.[30] ...
A great loss in Forbes’s death. I have been trembling lest I should hear that Dr. Hooker is chosen to the chair at Edinburgh, which would give him very good pay, I suppose, and he would fill the place well, but it would take him away from special botany, which would be a great pity....
TO A. DE CANDOLLE.
May 29, 1855.
The class which leaves college this summer have bespoken photographic likenesses, on paper, of their professors,—my colleagues and myself,—and this gives me an opportunity of obtaining from the artist some duplicate copies of that for which I sat, and which Mrs. Gray pronounces a very good likeness.
It is not so much vanity that induces me to ask you to accept of the copy I inclose, as the hope of getting yours in return, if that same style be adopted in Geneva, and be as little expensive as here,—to add to the already considerable number of portraits of botanists which make the chief adornment of my rooms,—among which the fine engraving of your distinguished father is conspicuous. I need not say that I should be glad to place the likeness of the son near to that of the father. Ever, my dear De Candolle,
Your sincere and faithful,
Asa Gray.
TO CHARLES WRIGHT.
August 28, 1855.
For a long while now I have been waiting for a good evening when I was not too tired to write you a long letter to meet you in California, in return, though a poor return, for your several nice letters from China.