Course 3. Bear the English winter, if we can’t avoid it, on the principle that “what can’t be cured must be endured.” And with your good fires and snugness it is not so bad. Secure our lodgings, and we will come over to you about the first of the coming month; and I get a solid piece of work done. If I can utilize the long evenings nothing can be better. Then in March or early April, when England is apt to be raw and rough, but Italy is smiling, we will rush to meet the spring, and return to England when that, too, is delightful and its days long and sunny. Note also, that even an Italian winter may be chilly and damp, and when it is so, there is no seeing galleries and churches without teeth-chattering and cold-taking, and it is not easy to get warm lodgings and decent fires. This course 3 would suit me best of all; for then we, lingering longer than you might be able to take time for, should return to England via Vienna and Berlin, which Mrs. Gray has never seen, and in the latter I have Willdenow’s herbarium to potter over. Now, my dear old friend, perpend my words (if you can read them; I write on an awkward bit of table), and then have your say. HÔTEL ST. ROMAIN, November 21, 1880. The correspondence of late has naturally been conducted by our respective better halves. I have at length (after giving Cosson two or three days to name up his American and Mexican plants) got fairly at work at the Jardin des Plantes, and have found (mainly in the herbarium Jussieu) the originals of several of Lamarck’s asters, which gives me happiness. They take every pains to accommodate and assist one at the herbarium. I see old Decaisne at his house; he is not strong. I think we shall need two weeks more here, and we hope for better weather than we have yet had. Colds one always takes at Paris, and Mrs. Gray now has her share. It took a long while to be clear of the one presented to me on our arrival here in October. But in the south of Spain my throat was as clear as a whistle. We are not bad just now, and are hopeful. I was perfectly sincere in writing that I should prefer returning to Kew for two or three months and to reserve Italy for the early spring. I shall get more work out of it so. At the same time I was confident that it would suit you best, and I am glad that you jump at it. It may enable us to get off the fag end (and best part) of Hayden’s report, if ever he sends over the portion in type. I am surprised that it has not before this come to hand. TO MISS A. A. GRAY. HÔTEL ST. ROMAIN, PARIS, December 3, 1880.