I have not done very much for botany in all that time; but Mrs. Gray and I have laid in a stock of health and vigor, corporeally, and have filled our heads with such interesting memories! This and such constant changes of scene have produced the illusion I refer to, through which, as through a haze, I dimly discern last summer. But out of that haze your bright and kindly faces look undimmed. Did I tell you (I think I did) of the pleasant fortnight here in September, when guests at Hooker’s; when for botany I worked up Oxytropis; when De Candolle and wife were here, and Bentham--serene old man--dined with us almost every day; of our crossing one bright day to Paris, and all that?... Thence, abandoning, from lateness of the season, the plan of returning through Auvergne, we came on quick via Nîmes, Lyons, etc., to Paris. There Mrs. Gray and I passed three very busy and very charming weeks; also doing some good botanical work, and having a good time with Decaisne and the other botanists at the garden, with Dr. Cosson and M. Lavallée.[115] Then, as the Hookers could not carry out their promise of joining us and going together to Italy now, we agreed to defer that till early spring, and back we came here for work. We are settled in our old lodgings on Kew Green, where we feel quite at home, and are near the Hookers and the herbarium; and here I am to polish off the Asteroideæ,--some very rough surfaces in Aster yet to grind down. We should be pleased to hear from you. It was at Cordova that I spelled out in Spanish the welcome news that the Republicans had carried the election, and grandly. And now, with Mrs. Gray’s love joined to mine to your good wives and children, I am Cordially yours, ASA GRAY. Dr. Gray settled down at Kew for hard work, but as the days were very short, and of course the herbarium was closed at dusk, he had long evenings. There were many pleasant dinners, among others at Mr. John Ball’s, where he met Robert Browning; and a charming visit to Lord Ducie at Tortworth, where he was much interested in the fine and rare trees, and had an afternoon’s visit to see Berkeley Castle, one of the oldest, if not the oldest, of inhabited castles in England. He paid another interesting visit to Cambridge, to Professor Babington, where he had not been since his visit in 1851, and where among others he met again Dr. Thompson, then Master of Trinity, who had so kindly received him in 1851. Mr. Lowell was then minister to England, and there were pleasant meetings with him. In early March he crossed to Paris, were he was joined by Sir Joseph and Lady Hooker for a journey by Mt. Cenis to Italy, going as far south as Castellamare and to Amalfi and Pæstum, and returning; short stays in Rome, Florence, and so to Venice, where the party divided, Dr. Gray going to Geneva. TO A. DE CANDOLLE. KEW, December 26, 1880.