The last news of you is a letter from your dear wife to mine,--giving such a pleasant picture of the two boys, and of your enjoyment of them. You say you are quite well, and Lady Hooker much the same,--which is comforting. But you are naturally growing older, like myself. I tire sooner than I used to do, and have not so sure a touch nor so good a memory. The daily grind we both find more wearing.... We should like to come over to you once more,--but it seems less and less practicable; unless I become actually unfit for work, and then I shall not be worth seeing.... Your affectionate old friend, A. GRAY. Old, indeed; the president of the Naturæ Curiosorum wrote me on August 3 that I have been one of the _curious_ for fifty years. * * * * * Dr. Gray wrote a notice of Charles Wright for the “American Journal of Science,” in which he says that “Charles Wright was born at Wethersfield, Connecticut; graduated at Yale in 1835. Had an early love for botany, which may have taken him to the South as a teacher in Mississippi, whence he went to Texas, joining the early immigration, and occupied himself botanizing and surveying, and then again in teaching. He accompanied various expeditions, and no name is more largely commemorated in the botany of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona than Charles Wright. It is an acanthaceous genus of this district, of his own discovery, that bears the name of Carlowrightia. Surely no botanist ever better earned such scientific remembrance by entire devotion, acute observation, severe exertion, and perseverance under hardship and privation.” He was engaged later for several years “in his prolific exploration of Cuba.” “Mr. Wright was a person of low stature and well-knit frame, hardy rather than strong, scrupulously temperate, a man of simple ways, always modest and unpretending, but direct and downright in expression, most amiable, trusty, and religious. He accomplished a great amount of useful and excellent work for botany in the pure and simple love of it; and his memory is held in honorable and grateful remembrance by his surviving associates.”[135] TO JOHN H. REDFIELD. CAMBRIDGE, November 3, 1885. MY DEAR REDFIELD,--I was interested in your Corema Con. I have a remark to make on the last sentence of it; I would ask, How could the plant have an introduction following the glacial period? And where could it have come from? Of course my idea is that it existed at the higher north before the glacial period--that is my fad. But one sees that this is one of a few plants that may be appealed to in behalf of an Atlantis theory,--as coming across the Atlantic, making this Corema a derivation from C. alba, of Portugal, or of _its_ ancestor. But the Atlantic is thought to be too deep for an Atlantis; and we do not need it much.