JDH mentions Mimuli, Pringle's plants, Certes, & Gay's plants, as exchanged with Asa Gray. John Ball is in Italy, he is looking old. Wright is dead as so many of their friends now are. Sends birthday wishes to Gray's wife Jane. JDH sympathises with Gray over the tedium of revising works, he is bored with revisions for GENERA PLANTARUM. He wishes Gray had had more time to spend on FLORA BOREALI AMERICANA. Mentions the price of the HMS 'Challenger' works & the part written by William Botting Hemsley. Discusses organisation of the RBG Kew herbarium, especially intercalation of accessions & mounting of specimens. [Jules Emile] Planchon, [Henri Ernest] Baillon, [Heinrich Gustav Adolf] Engler & Ludwig Adolph Timotheus Radlkolfe have all been at RBG, Kew together. Mentions the marriage of his son Charles Paget Hooker, at Morton Hall, the home of a Mr Berneys. Mention they both like to fish so have gone to Scotland for a fishing honeymoon. Brian Harvey Hodgson Hooker has gone to Australia to visit Melbourne, Sydney, Queensland & New Zealand. Paying for his sons has put JDH in debt. He is working on Laurineae [Lauraceae] for the FLORA BRITISH INDIA & thinks they need to be arranged differently: there are two genera in Beilschmideliae [Beilschmiedia] & Cyanodaphne is not a good genus. He has completed work on the Cinnamomums. Reginald Hawthorn Hooker has done well in his 'Bachelores Sciences' degree at the Sorbonne & will be tutored by La Touche in preparation for matriculation at the University of London. Grace Ellen Hooker prefers to return to Paris than become a governess. Harriet Anne Thiselton-Dyer née Hooker is feeling better & Joseph Symonds Hooker & Richards Symonds Hooke are well. Mentions the illness of a Mrs Rothey[?]. Has a copy of Sustermans' 'Head of Galileo' for sale, painted by Miss Horner's protégée.