I send ... a copy (roughly put into paper covers) of the first volume of “Genera Illustrata,” regretting there is not time to send you a bound copy. I hope you will like it. Sprague is improving fast, reads Brown’s papers, etc., and is getting a good insight into structural botany, even the nicest points. We mean to carry on the work, and I hope for considerable London sale of it. The price is $6, or in London, £1 10s., which I trust will be thought low. Please notice it in the “Journal.” The proceeds go principally to support Sprague in carrying on the work. I put his name on the title-page without his knowledge and at the expense of his great modesty. I want to introduce the tussock grass on our eastern coast, where it will thrive well. Is it too late to send this spring? Or will you send in autumn? P. S.--The last steamer brought good news of peace and strength in England, dissipating the alarm of many, but I felt none myself, having a strong confidence in the soundness of Old England and the durability of her institutions, of which I am here esteemed an over admirer. Dr. Gray was married, May 4, 1848, to Jane L., daughter of Charles Greely Loring, a lawyer in Boston. In June they made a short journey to Washington, that Dr. Gray might, on undertaking to describe the plants of the United States Exploring Expedition, see Commodore Wilkes. TO JOHN TORREY. CAMBRIDGE, 8th May, 1848. Yesterday I sent to Grant at Wiley’s for you a parcel containing some “Linnæas,” etc., received from Hamburg, your copy of Seubert on Elatine, and a bound copy of the “Genera Floræ Americæ Boreali-Orientalis Illustrata,” which I ask you to accept, and which I trust you will like. There is also a specimen inclosed of some vegetable product that has lately become somewhat common here, and which I thought you might like to examine. It is apparently of a rather complicated structure, in fruit evidently, but syncarpous; the heterogenous and baccate or fleshy ovaries being immersed without apparent order in a farinaceous receptacle. If you should be at all puzzled. with it, and can’t find out to what particular family it belongs, you might call in the aid of Mrs. Torrey and the girls, to aid in the investigation. I dare say you will make it out. June, 1848. I am just home this morning, and as I had no time yesterday to reply to your kind letter of Saturday, I write at once now.... Friday evening we were at the White house, to see Madame Polk. We have accomplished a great deal of sight-seeing and all in our week and a day, and J. [Illustration: THE BOTANIC GARDEN HOUSE IN 1852] has enjoyed it much, except the drawback of not seeing Mrs. T. and the girls and yourself at home, which she greatly wished.... Now as to Exploring Expedition. We will talk it over in full when you come on here toward the end of this month.