My Dear Sir/

Pardon me for giving you trouble

Enclosed I send a root of a sort of wild oat grass, Bromus?, from the limestone hills of California   this is N^o. 1—said to grow on all the hills in N.W. America. N^o. 2 is a root of a very peculiar & distinct variety of barley which came from N^o. 1, at which you will I have no doubt shake your head. The most curious fact is that several roots of barley all differing from our English barley came up in the same bed of oat grass.¹ The transmutation of a genus seems almost incredible but I have seen so many changes that I have ceased to doubt strongly. I hope to be able to show you both barley & wheat from the root of grass enclosed N^o. 1**

again apologising for troubling you with the rather wild ideas of my old age | I am My D^r Sir | Y^rs. ever truly | Tho^s. Rivers

**This kind of grass has been domesticated some ten years or so not here but in New South Wales where it was taken by a gold digger from California & brought thence by my brother² who was much struck with its vigour in that dry climate