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Botanic Garden. Cambridge, Mass., Sept. 11, '72. My dear Muir: Your welcome letter of the 24th Aug. reached Cambridge
before I did, and I respond to it among the earliest. How you must have enjoyed Torrey, and what a surprise it must have
been And to us, too, to know that he was at Salt Lake City, and almost on his way to Ogden when we were there going East.
We (wife and I) had to the last a happy, successful and instructive journey, except that the driver upset us on the way to
Calaveras - at Jamestown, and sprained Mrs. Gray's shoulder. But it is all well now. We made no long excursions after our
return to San Francisco. But we went to Santa Cruz, by land, and had a day among the Redwoods of the San Lorenzo Valley, some
of which, for size, would do no discredit to Calaveras or Mariposa. Going E ast we reached the Colorado Mts. via Denver. Found
Dr. Parry settled for the summer at Empire City, in a cabin by himself, which would have delighted you. I climbed with him
Mt. Parry and Mt. ? illegible and he made with me and Mrs. Gray a most successful and gratifying ascent of Gray's Peak - the
finest mountain I know. I am going to send you and Mr. Hutchings books and publications as soon as I can get them from New
York. And my Dubuque discourse, which I rehearsed to you in our pleasant walks, I shall send by mail as soon as printed -
in two weeks, say. Now I am longing for some of the plants that grow around you - and seeds. The ferns we took from Nevada
Fall neighbourhood were, I find, sent too dry, and a considerable part are dead in consequence. That is, they were packed
in a cotton bag without anything to restrain evaporation, and so dried too much. I should have had oiled paper or oiled cloth
to wrap them in. But I find the best and most available thing to send live plants in by post is Segar-boxes, and the plants
packed snugly in hardly damp moss - peat moss (Sphagnum) by all means, if that is to be had. I should think it grew in the
Valley. The season for safe sending is at hand, and I will begin the next sheet with a list of some of the things I am longing
for, at the rate of a segar box full of each. Remainder of letter evidently lost Asa Gray 575