It is very good of you to write to me. I was about to drop you a line by the next post, when yours of the 21st came in. My special object was to tell you that I have just had addressed to you, through the New York publishers, a little book, made up of scattered papers on Darwinian topics, which some of my friends thought it might be useful to collect. I somewhat mistrust their judgment, but have yielded to their request. There is nothing new in the volume, except a short essay on the hypothetical duration of species, and a rather long one at the end, upon teleology as affected by evolution, which I should be glad to have you read, and should like to know whether you think it hits the mark. I have no idea who P. C. W. and the Westminster Reviewer may be, but I suspect they are one and the same. If you should know, please inform me.... Yes, it has been warm enough, and it was unceasingly so for twelve days. Mrs. Gray rushed to the seashore at Beverly; but I mainly stayed at home, kept out of the sun all I could, and rather enjoyed the heat than otherwise. But at the end I broke down; came all at once upon the novel sensation of being an old man. And so we hastened up and concluded an arrangement which had been left loosely and vaguely under consideration, viz., to revisit for myself, and to introduce Mrs. Gray to, the higher Alleghanies in Virginia, Carolina, and Tennessee, where I used to roam and botanize more than thirty years ago. We expect to set out in two or three weeks. It is not Switzerland, but it is a region of mountains, dells, and rills, and forests, which I have been longing to revisit. Oh, that you could be with us! Two botanists will join us at Philadelphia, and perhaps a third. Among the very few copies of my “Darwiniana” which I have sent to England is one to the editor of the “Spectator,” whose ideas fit in with mine well, as I judge from reading the paper regularly. Do you know him? He is a very broad churchman. I am just beginning to print a portion of my new “Flora of North America.” There can be no going to Europe for me till this volume or half volume is off my hands. * * * * *