A good number of our English acquaintances have been over this autumn. Dr. and Mrs. Carpenter are among the last to return. He has just closed a popular course of Lowell lectures, and they go back a week or two hence. One hardly knows what brought Herbert Spencer. He seems most to have enjoyed Niagara, where he stayed a week. I do not think the dinner demonstration for him at New York amounted to very much; nor do I take stock in the statement, the truth of which he took for granted, that the hair turns gray in the United States ten years earlier than in England. I should say the only difference is, that there is more hair remaining here to turn gray at middle age or later. Spencer also told us of a discovery he had made, that all Americans had the outer corners of their eyes lower than the inner, the opposite of our antipodes, the Mongols. I have just returned from a “sleigh ride.” Snow, though a nuisance in towns, is a convenience in the country, greatly facilitating travel, and a drive upon runners instead of wheels, well wrapped in furs and with buffalo robes, is much enjoyed. At the end of August, Mrs. Gray and I went to Montreal, to the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where we were guests of the president, Dr. Dawson. We made an excursion to Ottawa, the new seat of government, and another down the noble St. Lawrence and up its picturesque tributary, the Saguenay. Otherwise we have been at home all the summer and autumn. And so we expect to be all winter, save perhaps a week in Washington. ... I think I have long owed your son Portsmouth a letter, but, though I should be glad to hear from him, and to know how he is getting on at Oxford, I cannot pay my debt to him to-day. And some twinges tell me that it is time to spare you. I will just add that what we hear prepares us to expect that before this reaches you, or even leaves this country, we may hear that the good and wise Archbishop of Canterbury will have gone to his rest; and Gladstone will have a most responsible as well as the most dignified position to fill. TO GEORGE BENTHAM. CAMBRIDGE, December 17, 1882. I must not let the New Year come to you without repairing my delay in the way of letter-writing, and sending you greeting and good wishes for the season. Especially I may congratulate you and felicitate ourselves, that is, we botanists, that you have, or will have, brought your _opus magnum_ to a completion!--proof-reading excepted. A great thing to have done. I did not make reply to your last of October 14, because I really could say nothing about the Eriocauloneæ.... Yes, I have De Candolle on Cultivated Plants, and am well pleased with it, so far as I have looked it over.