* * * * * ... I beg to add, for your consideration and that of the corporation, a few words of a personal character. With the present academic year I shall have completed thirty years of service in the professorial chair to which I was called in the spring of 1842. The Garden, which had been under no professorial care for years, and which has since had a long and hard struggle for existence, the conservatories, the herbarium and its library, both steadily increasing, and now the lecture-room, laboratory, etc., make up an establishment which has grown by degrees into one which requires much time, care, and anxiety to administer, and for which I have now done the main part of what could be expected of me or any one man. The experience of the last and the present year clearly shows me that the work of instruction, steadily increasing in its demands under the present system, weighted more and more with the load of administration, is more than I can carry on. I have some warnings, besides, of the increase of years, which I ought to consider; and I definitively propose to lay down, at the close of the present academic year, as large a part of this load as I possibly can without serious prejudice to this department and this establishment. I suppose that either the duties of instruction or of administration, beyond that of the herbarium, must be entirely surrendered. If I can be spared, and if what I could do for the herbarium could be reckoned an equivalent for rent of the house I reside in, I should crave to resign both the charge of the Garden and of the professorship. There is reason to think that the time is at hand when changes such as are here suggested may be propitiously made. When I came here, in 1842, I was carrying on and publishing a most important original work, the “Flora of North America.” I have worked on it from time to time, but I never have been able to publish any more of it. And now what was done has all to be done again, and carried if possible to a completion; and there is no one else to do it if I do not. My educational books, or most of them, require to be re-edited; and I fail to find time and sufficient freedom of mind for the undertaking. If I could accomplish these tasks, or a good part of them, I am of opinion that I should in consequence be able (as is especially my desire) to do a great deal more for the university and the permanent interest of this establishment than I can expect now to do, as at present situated, even if it were possible or probable that I could so continue for any length of time. I am, Very respectfully and truly yours, ASA GRAY. TO JOHN TORREY. CAMBRIDGE, January 4, 1872. DEAR DOCTOR,--I have a horrid cold, which makes me unwell. I write a brief line, in response to yours of yesterday, mainly to say that I fear I disagree with you about the reply to be made to Wilkes’s urgent request to print the manuscript of the Oregon collection of Wilkes’ Expedition.