I wish I could write to you as you wish, all about botany, etc. I wish I could aid you as I desire, but I fear it is impossible. I must have rest and less anxiety. Two more years like the last would probably destroy me. If I had an assistant or two, to take details off my hands, I might stand it; as it is I cannot. Carey spent three months with me last season, and was to study and ticket your Texan collection in my hands, take a set for his trouble, and Mr. Lowell and Mr. S. T. Carey would take what they needed and pay for them, so that I could pay your book-bill at Fowle’s. The utmost Carey found time to do was to throw the collection into orders; there they still lie, in the corner! There perhaps they had best lie, now, till the collection of the past season reaches me, when I will try to study them all together, along with Lindheimer’s collections, a set of which still waits for me to study them. Will you wonder that I am a little disheartened when, in spite of every effort, I make so little progress? And in six weeks I begin to lecture in college again; and in April the Garden will require more time than I can give it. Such are merely some of the things on my hands, some of my cares! Still I am interested in you, and in your collections, and will do what I can.... Then if you will continue to send seeds (pretty largely), also bulbs, cacti, tubers, etc., now in early spring (and root-cuttings of some vines), taking pains that they are sent in a direct way, so as to come alive in May, etc., I will get an appropriation allowed from the Garden for you. Don’t try other live plants till we have better communication with Texas. We have sunk money in this already and had to give it up.... Forgive my long neglect; accept my apologies. I’ll see if I can do any better hereafter, when I have a wife to write letters for me. March 10th. Besides all the rest, the Academy’s correspondence presses hard on me. I have written twenty-four letters for the steamer to-morrow. Fairly to keep up my correspondence and answer all my letters would take full two hours every day of the week except the Sabbath. So have mercy, and long patience.... Meanwhile my “Manual” is out; but not published till the 10th February. What can you expect from a man who takes up a job in February, 1847, to finish in May or June certain; but who, though he works like a dog, and throws by everything else, does not get it done till February comes round again. So it is only now that I have anything to send you. I am now printing off my “Genera Illustrata”--the text for one hundred plates; mean to have it out in a month; but I will not wait any longer.... TO GEORGE ENGELMANN. CAMBRIDGE, February 29, 1848.