The L.’s abroad, except the two girls (who are to winter at San Remo) are now en voyage homeward. William, their father, has been painted by Holl. He is a good subject. Saw your sister B. (and kind Lombe); she writes a charming letter to my wife; seems to hold her own wonderfully. CAMBRIDGE, November 22, 1886. Well, I have got safely through my seventy-sixth birthday, which gives a sort of assurance. I have always observed that if I live to November 18, I live the year round! You are working at Euphorbs, etc.; I at Malvaceæ, in which I find a good deal to do for the species, and something for the betterment of genera.... TO SIR EDWARD FRY. CAMBRIDGE, November 13, 1886. MY GOOD FRIEND,--Let me turn for a moment to our quarter-millennial celebration of the foundation of our university, though you in Europe may count our antiquity as very modern. It was an affair of three days, culminating on Monday last, and was altogether very pleasant. You will like to know that among the honorary degrees given, was one to Professor Allen, of the Episcopal Theological School here, in recognition of the merits of his “Continuity of Religious Thought,” which work, I am glad to remember, you much liked. The Mother Cambridge sent to us the master of St. John’s, Dr. Taylor, and Professor Creighton, of Immanuel College, to which the founders and first professors of Harvard belonged. Mrs. Creighton came with him, and we found them pleasant people. I suppose Lowell’s oration, Holmes’s poem, and the doings in general will be in print before very long, and I shall not forget to send you a copy. We have been away from Cambridge very little this last summer and autumn, only on very short visits, or one rather longer one to my birthplace in the central portion of New York, where we had a family gathering. There is a lull just now in your political situation. I certainly at your last election should have gone against Gladstone! How so many of my countrymen--I mean thoughtful people--approve of homerule, i.e., of semi-secession, I hardly understand. But local government as to local affairs is our strength, and is what we are brought up to. Also, our safety is in that the land--the agricultural land--is so largely owned by the tiller.... We should like to see old friends in England once more in the flesh, and the feeling grows so that I may feign a scientific necessity, and we may, if we live and thrive, cross over to you next summer. At least we dream of it, though it may never come to pass. TO J. D. HOOKER. CAMBRIDGE, January 18, 1887. MY DEAR HOOKER,--Glad to see the “Botanical Magazine” figure of Nymphæa flava †.6917. There is something not quite right in the history as you give it. Leitner was the botanist who showed the plant to Audubon, and gave it the name which Audubon cites, and he died--was killed by the Florida Indians--“half a century ago.” He was the “a naturalist” you refer to.