I wanted to say something on the last two pages, but as I have nothing in particular to except to, and much to approve, and as it is late bedtime, I spare you further comments. I set out to find flaws, as likely to be more suggestive and therefore far more useful to you than any amount of praise, with which I could fill page after page. TO W. J. HOOKER. CAMBRIDGE, December 6, 1857. Your first letter is now gone to Sullivant, because you speak of him so handsomely, and say that Mitten is instructed to prepare a set of Mosses for him. A noble fellow is Sullivant and deserves all you say of him and his works. The more you get to know of him the better you will like him. Let me tell you about my “Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States.” It was quite impossible, of course, that the publishers should provide such illustrations as the fourteen plates and keep the book at a salable price, so Sullivant, on his own motion, had the eight plates of Musci engraved in copper, at his own cost, for $630 (about £126), and gave them to the work, after printing 250 copies for his separate booklet I sent you. I gave the six plates of Ferns, etc., cut on stone by Sprague to complete the plan. In the “Journal” you are wrong in supposing that the Musci were even drawn by Sprague. If in time please correct this when you notice his book. Sullivant drew them all with his own hands (as he did those of former memoirs which pleased you well), and had them copied and reduced to proper size by a German artist he employs. So that besides his labor, he has expended at least £180 in money, on these plates. They were executed on copper by a young engraver in Boston. Your second letter, begun the day the other was dispatched, reached me a few days ago, while dear Torrey was here on a visit. He has just returned to New York. We called to see Greene, but he was not in.... TO GEORGE BENTHAM. November 16, 1857. I have noted with interest Naudin’s doings in Cucurbitacæ. It has induced me to look a little into the geographical question, and I begin really to think C. Pepo, and perhaps others, are American. Mr. Sophocles, our Greek tutor, who knows cultivated plants well, and everything about mediæval and ancient Greek, is quite clear that the ancients knew nothing of pumpkins and winter squashes, and is able to correct De Candolle’s lucubrations in one or two points. Our New England and Canadian aborigines had beans, too. Those and Cucurbita came north from a warmer climate with maize, I presume.... When I got your proof-sheet of the “British Flora” and your long letter of 28th May, there was something I wanted to talk about, I dare say, but there was no writing then, as you had gone abroad, and now the subject is all out of my head. But I have occasion to take up the subject of popular names of plants quite seriously in a week or two, and I may have something to remark.