I should have written to you long ago, but as you would always have news of me through Hooker, and I had nothing special to say, I refrained. It is always a pleasure to hear from you, and I have no idea that our long correspondence should drop. I should have seen more of you and Mrs. Bentham (and my wife, too, regretted much), but you were much laid up with that sciatica, and we were dreadfully pressed at the last. Could we have had this winter in England, as we had at first hoped, it would have been well. Torrey made me a visit in January; is well and happy, except that he gets only odds and ends of time for botany, and so cannot do anything to much purpose. The Eriogoneæ being a pet group of his, and his old sketches very useful in my elaboration, I have joined his name to my own in the paper I am now printing. At the wonderful rate you are going on you will soon complete the “Flora Australiensis.” Happy and fortunate man that you are, both in the faculty of accomplishing work and in having your whole time for just what you want to do. TO R. W. CHURCH. CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U. S., February 15, 1870. MY DEAR CHURCH,--My good wife has just handed me these sheets for Mrs. Church, and if it were not just on post-morning I should gossip with you, I suppose, to the extent of a sheetful, and send you our hearty thanks for your most kind and welcome Christmas letter,--the acknowledgments for which have been deferred too long already. For myself, I have had three or four delightful weeks out of our short winter vacation, which have been given wholly to botanical work in my study. But this week begins again my round of official duties, to continue till July. I rather weary of it as I grow older; and still more I grudge the time. I could now, I see, make fair arrangement for relinquishing a large part of my work in the university if there were some one ready to come in as a colleague or suffragan. But the person wanted is not to be found, and it will take a long while to hatch and raise one. We shall see. I keep up all my lively interest in English affairs. But I do not get the items of news now as early as I used to do when the “Gardener’s Chronicle” had a news-sheet attached. I do well enough in the scientific line, however, as I see both “Nature” and the “Academy.” The former should bear for its motto “Natura non facit saltum;” it does not jump at once to perfection; the articles are many of them rather weak and washy. The “Academy” in its way seems better. The “Athenæum” (which I hope will revive, now that Dixon is out of it), the “Saturday Review,” and the “Pall Mall Budget” come to us in our book club, after a while, in our turn.