Yes, Magnolia seeds hang out awhile in autumn, finally stretch and break the threads of spiral vessels. Whether birds eat them I don’t know. They look enticing and have a pulpy coat, are bitter and spicy. Shall I send you more of these circulars? I shall send to Indian people too. TO CHARLES WRIGHT. April 2, 1867. I sent your twenty dollars to aid the subscription for the starving Southerners. There have been handsome sums raised for them in the Northern States. But I am afraid you must get most imperfect and one-sided statements of the doings of Congress by the tone of your letters, and decidedly need enlightenment. It is the President, not Congress, that needs to learn the Constitution and the laws of the land. And your Southern loyal friends, if you could get voice of them, would beg Congress to take even more urgent steps for their protection and defense by reconstruction. However, things seem to be going on now pretty satisfactorily. The President is sinking into his deserved insignificance, and the leading rebels are coming out decidedly more sensibly than many of their professed Northern friends. And we hope, therefore, that they may begin to give some fair chance to the loyal men of the South to be heard and to get their rights, which have been indeed shamefully trampled upon by the President and the dominant party at the South.... I have not time to answer all your interesting botanical notes, and can only thank you for them. I hope you will continue to keep well. Our spring is late and wet. There is still quite a covering of snow in the garden, and we have had a deal of it in the winter, and wretched walking and getting about in every way. Happy you, in the tropics. You ask who Austin[68] is. He was an old protégé of Dr. Torrey; lives now in New Jersey, and studies Lemnaceæ and Hepaticæ. ... You will be more delighted than I am to know that the Democrats have probably carried Connecticut. But I am not much the contrary; for the Republicans are too many in Congress for their own good, or ours, and it secures the defeat of Barnum for Congress; as it should be.... April 8. I have been having a Sunday’s work over your plants. It grieves my heart and will grieve yours badly when I tell you that your boxes were put under a cargo of wet sugar, which drained into them, and have ruined the collection. ... As to specimens to dispose of, say only one half or one third of the whole mass is left fit for it. Oh dear! God grant you patience! Will you have the courage to set to work over again? I will try next to tell you what is worst. Ever your disconsolate, A. GRAY. TO WILLIAM M. CANBY.[69] July 8, 1867. MY DEAR CANBY, ... I am charmed with what you say of Dionæa, can confirm some of it, and believe all the rest. Never mind the anatomy of the leaf now--little promise from that; but do go on with experiments on feeding, and record them carefully, and publish when ready.