I have settled down to my work with enjoyment, but with a growing sense of discouragement growing out of an _embarras de richesses_. It was natural to find here a great accumulation of collections of North American plants, all needing examination; but unfortunately, they continue to come in faster than I can study and dispose of them. This comes from the increasing number of botanical explorers, and the new facilities offered to them by new railroads along our southwestern frontiers and other out-of-the-way regions. The consequence is, that while new and interesting things are pouring in, which one must attend to, and which are very enjoyable, I do not get ahead with the steady and formidable work of the “North American Flora.” I begin to think it were a happier lot to have the comparatively completed botany of an old country to study, in which your work “were done when ’twere done,” and in which, even if it were not done quickly, you were not called on to do it over and over, to bring the new into shape and symmetry with the old.
By the way, I finally wrote out an article on a question which you once treated, and upon which we more than once conversed, taking for my text a paragraph in Lubbock’s address at York last summer. I had partly promised Mr. Walter Browne to write it, so I sent it to him; and as a proof from the “Contemporary Review” has come back to me, I suppose it may be printed before long.[124] I shall be curious to know what you think of it.
I sent you a portion of a New York religious newspaper containing a sort of review of two books with which I beguiled the voyage last October or November. It is of no great consequence. But I sometimes write such reviews or articles to papers of this kind, which are endeavoring to do their best in bridging over the gap between the thoughts of a former generation, or of our younger days, and of the present day. I believe such articles are now and then helpful.
You supposed that I had seen the “Lyell’s Life and Letters” sooner than I had. To my surprise the volumes are not reprinted in America; and I have only just succeeded in procuring a copy from England.
I have read a good deal of it, and with much interest. The allusion to me, which you referred to, was of course very pleasant. The last chapter of the “Antiquity of Man” had apprised me (for I never had any direct correspondence with Lyell) that we thought much alike on such matters; and we are apt to approve views which agree with our own. I always thought Lyell a very level-headed man,--one with a very judicial turn of mind; and his letters and journal bring this out well, as they do the whole life and the charming character of the man. It is interesting to see how early he took the line which he followed in his whole life’s work, and which has changed the face of geology and philosophical natural history. For, indeed, Lyell is as much the father of the new mode of thought which now prevails as is Darwin. I have said a word about this, which I will try to send you.