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Hudson, Ohio, September Twenty-First, 1880.

Professor C. E. Bessey:
My dear sir:

Your note of August seventh, as well as a copy of your excellent new book, have duly gone to hand. I have taken a good deal of pleasure in looking over its pages. Whether the admiration I feel for the book will be of that practical advantage which you of course desire, is uncertain. Our college is to remove to Cleveland, with a trebled income, and a larger faculty my own studies have been in the line of chemistry and chemical physics, and if I have the selection, I shall give up botany to
a new professor of biology whom we propose to select. All the botanical work remaining to me therefore, is the conduction through botany a class who have already in part purchased the book prescribed of late in our catalogue. It would hardly be worth my while to make a change for the one year.

Were it not for this fact, I am now under the impression that I should be likely to adopt the new book: which I certainly like very much.

Respectuflly,
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