I see also, from the English papers I read, how you must picture us as in the extreme of turmoil and confusion and chaos. But if you were here, you would open your eyes to see everything going on quietly, hopefully, and comfortably as possible. I suppose we do not appreciate our miseries. We accept our misfortunes and adversities, but mean to retrieve them, and would sink all that we have before giving up. We work hard, and persevere, and expect to come out all right, to lay the foundations of a better future, no matter if they be laid in suffering. That will not hurt us now, and may bring great good hereafter. I never saw, and have scarcely heard of, Miss Cooper’s book you ask after. She is the daughter of the late J. Fenimore Cooper, the novelist. The village she describes must be Cooperstown, New York, in the county adjacent to that in which I was brought up,--a region which, every time I visit it, I say it is the fairest of lands, and the people the happiest. Oh, as to the weeds; Mrs. Gray says she allows that our weeds give up to yours. Ours are modest, woodland, retiring things, and no match for the intrusive, pretentious, self-asserting foreigners. But I send you seeds of one native weed which, corrupted by bad company, is as nasty and troublesome as any I know, namely, Sicyos angulatus; also of a more genteel Cucurbitacea, Echinocystis lobata (the larger seeds). Upon these, especially upon the first, I made my observation of tendrils coiling to the touch. Put the seeds directly into the ground; they will come up in spring, in moist garden soil. My observations were made on a warm, sunny day. I doubt if you have warmth and sunshine enough in England to get up a sensible movement. My note about them is in “Proceedings of the American Academy,” iv., p. 98, reprinted in “Silliman’s Journal,” March, 1859, p. 277. I must own that upon casually taking them up since, I never have obtained such very good results as upon two days of August, 1858. Upon gourds affecting each other’s fruits, I have made no observations at all. I have only referred to that, as a well-known thing, at least, of common repute here, and then referred to maize, where the soft sweet-corn, when fertilized by hard yellow-corn, the grain so fertilized takes the character of the fertilizer. My note about it is in Academy “Proceedings,” vol. iv., I think. You have the volumes (which I have not in reach now), and can find it by the index. It does not amount to much. Nothing on maize I know of except Bonafous’ folio volume. I am going to get and send you grains of four or five sorts of maize. About the involucrate form, I wrote in my last. TO GEORGE ENGELMANN. CAMBRIDGE, 14th October, 1862. DEAR ENGELMANN,--Never mind turmoil. It will come out right. I go against the abolition wing, but support the President in his Proclamation.