... To get my train yesterday I had to leave the house at one. Dom Pedro till sixteen minutes of that, with Eliot, A. Agassiz, and two Brazilians. They came to the house, the door being open, and I received them in the library.... Sargent was with me to take him off my hands when I had to go. We treated him as we should any gentleman, though I believe I once addressed him as Your Majesty when flourishing the poison-bottle under his nose. He is a large, square-built, good-looking man of about my age, I think. Never did I have more questions to answer in ten minutes, nor questions more direct and to the point. Taken into the herbarium, he recognized what it was, complimented me by saying that my name was a well-known one (I suppose Agassiz had put him up to that), and I returned by saying that, in at least one case, we were members of the same botanical society. “How many species of plants have you specimens of?” About 65,000. “How do you arrange them?” Cases opened, and I began to show him. “Please let me see some plant.” I pulled out the genus cover first at hand, which happened to be European Saxifrages; opened. He took up a sheet. “Saxifraga irrigua, European. I do not want to see plants of Europe. Let me see an American plant.” I took another cover and showed Saxifraga peltata of California. “Have you Sage-brush?” Yes. “Let me see Sage-brush.” I took him across the room to the Artemisias, and showed him, first, the one he saw so much of en route to California; second, the northern one to which Lewis and Clark gave the name at first. “How do you prevent insects from destroying them?” They are all poisoned. “What do you poison with?” Corrosive sublimate dissolved in alcohol. “How do you use it?” Here I ran off and brought back the poison-bottle, and applied the liquid to a specimen under the imperial nose. I then ran off to set down the bottle in a safe place on the middle table, when he followed me up and asked: “How strong do you make the solution?” I gave him the answer as well as I could, when he turned to one of his suite:-- “Please write that down.” And it was done accordingly. In the library I had displayed, enough to attract the eye, the bound volumes of “Flora Brasiliensis,” which he glanced at, and asked:-- “Have you the work on the botany of the vicinity of Rio Janeiro?” I answered, Yes, thanks to Mr. Agassiz,--to whom the emperor had given it. But he seemed uneasy until he saw it, and I put two of the folio volumes into his hands, which seemed to satisfy him. Then, as he was passing on to the lecture-room, I slipped off. At head of Common, in Boston, I met C., who told me Dom Pedro was down at his museum at 7½ A.M. C. was not going to Hunnewell’s.... I amused them with the account of the conversation with the emperor. The rhododendrons, and azaleas too, most splendid. Nothing like it at Philadelphia. The best as well as the most he ever had.... TO R. W. CHURCH. August 3, 1876.