May 29, 1855. The class which leaves college this summer have bespoken photographic likenesses, on paper, of their professors,--my colleagues and myself,--and this gives me an opportunity of obtaining from the artist some duplicate copies of that for which I sat, and which Mrs. Gray pronounces a very good likeness. It is not so much vanity that induces me to ask you to accept of the copy I inclose, as the hope of getting yours in return, if that same style be adopted in Geneva, and be as little expensive as here,--to add to the already considerable number of portraits of botanists which make the chief adornment of my rooms,--among which the fine engraving of your distinguished father is conspicuous. I need not say that I should be glad to place the likeness of the son near to that of the father. Ever, my dear De Candolle, Your sincere and faithful, ASA GRAY. TO CHARLES WRIGHT. August 28, 1855. For a long while now I have been waiting for a good evening when I was not too tired to write you a long letter to meet you in California, in return, though a poor return, for your several nice letters from China. It is now time my letter was off,--when lo and behold!-- Yesterday morning I was sitting here busy with steady work and not expecting much interruption; now, this evening, my passage is taken, my trunk packed, I am hurriedly closing up affairs, and to-morrow morning go on board steamer America and sail for Liverpool. I have to go and look after my brother-in-law, who is sick in Paris of a fever. No one of the family can go but me, and I manage to find the time. Mr. Loring pays the traveling charges, and off I go, to be gone, however, not over two months, perhaps not so long; a week in Paris, another at Kew, a few days more in England; this must repay me (besides the consciousness of having done my duty) for some twenty odd days of discomfort at sea! What have I been doing of late? Not much accomplished, i. e., published. Of my “Plantæ Novæ Thurberianæ” and “Notes on Vavæa and Rhytidandra” I have sent you copies already, but I will send you more. A useful article on the Smithsonian Institution, in July number of “Silliman,” probably you have seen in the “Journal;” never mind, I send you a separate copy by mail. Some critical notices which I have no copies of. What I am about doing, I can always talk largely of. I am preparing a new edition of the “Manual of Botany of the Northern United States,” and a new elementary work[31] of a familiar character, to go with it, separate and with original pictures on wood by Sprague, and I am to finish the “Flora” volume and “Plantæ Wrightianæ” with it. I have determined Berlandier’s plants up to end of Compositæ. Also I have done, along with Torrey, the botany of several expeditions across the continent for railroad surveys, which are soon to be published. Work goes slowly and I grow old. This little holiday will not be a bad thing for me, though it puts me back a little. TO W. J. HOOKER.