The winter was spent in hard work in the Kew herbarium. He enjoyed heartily in spring a journey through Italy with his friends Sir Joseph and Lady Hooker, returning to Kew to spend the summer, at work in the herbarium, and he sailed again for home in October, 1881, landing early in November. TO JOHN H. REDFIELD. HÔTEL CONTINENTAL, PARIS, October 3, 1880. MY DEAR REDFIELD,--Many thanks for letter of 17th September, which reached me at Kew, where we passed a busy and happy fortnight with the Hookers, and did some botanical work. We left Friday morning, reached Paris pleasantly that evening, where we make only two days more stay at present, but leave Tuesday for the Loire district and thence to Spain, but expect to return here after our round, and stay possibly a month. Play first, work afterwards, is our present motto. If the Academy, or any of the brethren, take Garber’s little Porto Rico collection, you or they will be glad to know that Professor Oliver and I named them up while I was at Kew, and that the list has been forwarded to D. C. Eaton. News I have little to tell you. Yet, though we left home only a month ago, it seems a half year. We had a botanical concours at Kew; for De Candolle and wife came over, as he says, to see Mrs. Gray and me, and the Hookers gave two dinner parties on the occasion; present four botanists, whose united ages sum up high, for Bentham had his eightieth birthday just before, De Candolle is about seventy-five, I on the verge of seventy, and Hooker, the baby of the set, in his sixty-fourth year; some younger botanists were with us,--Oliver, Baker, Masters, young Balfour, etc. TO J. D. HOOKER. MALAGA, August 30, 1880. ... As to pictures, you know I am no picture sharp; but Madrid and Seville (which must be taken together) are a revelation of Murillo and Velasquez.... That kind of thing is nearly over with us on leaving attractive and sunny Seville. We cut off Jerez and Cordova, and came in here yesterday through olive groves enough to saponify and saladulate creation, and the passage through the mountains from Bobadilla to Malaga, wonderfully grand, ending in orange groves filling lovely dells and valleys. Nothing to keep us long here, though picturesqueness is not wanting. The days are hot. At Granada, to which we fly to-morrow afternoon, we expect to find the _juste milieu_.... One bit of this sheet to tell you that Joey’s portrait has been painted by Murillo, and a good likeness, hair, pose, and features. He is holding a bird aloft, and a white little dog is looking up wistfully at it, to Joey’s delight. It is in the Museum at Madrid, and is much admired.... TO R. W. CHURCH. THE ALHAMBRA, GRANADA, November 2, 1880.