I send back your Cavendish with many thanks.
The old cock was much like Robert Brown in many respects. Though there is nothing in him to love, he calls out a sort of admiration, partly in the literal sense, that is, wonder, mixed with pity, that he had no feelings. Brown had, and besides he was social and not so very queer, but he lived very much in the same way, and I suppose had as little sense of religion.
Schreber spells Anthephora, but gives no derivation. P. de B., you see, does, so Anthephora is doubtless right.
Can that and Buffalo-grass be the same? I doubt. Has the Anthephora-like plant no stamens of its own?
The mode of growth does not so much distinguish your plant from Newberry’s Hemitones, and verily I suspect they are the same species. Pity you come in and spoil a good name!...
TO A. DE CANDOLLE.
April 27, 1859.
I am charmed at the intelligence you give of your son, and that he takes to botany with spirit, so that he may continue the celebrity of the honored name of De Candolle in the third generation.
We shall welcome him when he comes to America and will do all we can to advance his objects. Oregon and the country to the north of it (British Columbia) will be in good and safe condition to explore, and I am convinced that there is still much to find in the Sandwich Islands, especially in the interior of Hawaii, where there is said to be a broad, almost untrodden, wooded region, between the principal mountain-masses, and occupying a good part of the interior of the island. But it will take time, patience, and considerable means to explore this region; provisions must be carried in for a long way, and many natives employed in feeding the exploring party. Next, the Kurile Islands, and all the northern part of Japan, Yesso, and the islands northeast of it offer the greatest interest; Manchuria also, but the Russians will look after that; Korea could perhaps be explored, so that the expedition you have suggested strikes my fancy as the best that could be, and would take your son through regions full of interest, safe to explore, and healthy. Certainly I can suggest nothing better.
Pray give my best regards to M. Boissier and to other friends in Geneva. I trust you will have safety and tranquillity in Switzerland. But it appears as if you would have war all around you,—a very sad state of things. Our latest intelligence looks very warlike, I am sorry to see. With all my heart I join in the supplication, “Give peace in our time, O Lord.” From such a war as is threatened no good can spring, in any result....