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Botanic Garden, Cambridge, Mass. April 9, 1873. My dear Mr. Muir: Thanks for your letter of Feb. 22 - 26 which arrived
yesterday. And I have already nearly finished my report on your precious specimens. As you did not number them I have to locate
them by putting the names on your slips that enclosed them, sometimes, too, returning the specimen, or a part of it. So that
you will identify them, I think. I grieve that I can't go to California again this summer. Time and means are wanting, so
I must stay at home and work on Calif. Botany instead. If you will keep botanizing in the high Sierras you will find curious
and new things, no doubt. One such, at least, is in your present collection in letter - the wee mouse-tail Ivesia. And the
rare sp. of Lewisia. is as good as new, and is so wholly to California. I wonder if you get roots of Whitneya dealbata as
soon as the snow has gone from them, you could not get them alive to me - to grow? It grows near Sentinel Dome, I believe.
I gathered it on Wawona point above the Mariposa grove. Spring is unusually tardy here. To-day it is as chilly as -- as San
Francisco in July You will grieve with us over the death of dear good old Torrey. Gone to his rest in a good old age, but
we miss him sadly. Ivesia Muirii is the first fruit the day of small things. Get a new alpine genus - that 1 may make a Muiria
glacialis Ever yours, A. Gray.