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concession to an American filled the glass half full of water.  I let it stand there, hoping to let it go at that, but Dr. B asked me if I did not like my wine.  I said I had never had any.  "Then it is about time you had!" he said emphatically.  By way of politeness I tasted the sour stuff, and did not make a face, either.  Treating the Wieners to bier and taking wine in Geneva, what sad wreck Europe makes of one's principles.  But Dr. Briquet was satisfied with just one sip.  He had noticed at the Vienna Congress that the American women with their husbands did not smoke--did we not smoke either?  I said the men did very commonly, and society women to some extent but not the vast majority of us.  He is delightfully entertaining--told of their botanical club which meets the first Sunday of the new year at the top of the highest peak of the Jura mountains just west of Geneva (I think it is west, opposite direction to the lake, anyway) eat their dinner there and then sit down in the snow and scoot to the bottom.  I recall that that was the way you descended the uppermost peak of Mt. Rainier.  I heard the nightingale again  in the Briquet garden.---------Charlottenburg, Deutschland, May 26.--When I reached Berlin this morning I was glad to get all the letters.-----"---I wish I could have stayed the rest of this week in Geneva.  I used so much time searching for Beauvois things.  The last afternoon, about 3:30 I started on the pile of indets.  A lot of excellent material, but I could only get it into genera, and not all that.  I worked till 7:45 and had to leave all Andropogoneae in tribe only.  I began at Festuceae, after throwall into tribes.  Dr. B came around about 6 and himself suggested that he might send this material to us to name.  I said we would be very glad to do it for him.  I wish he could ship the whole grass collection for us to put in order, no one here can do it, after what Mez has done to it.  It has such precious material in it.---------I left Geneva at 6:50 yesterday morning and had a glorious morning through Switzerland.  At Basle the Zoll or douane wasn't as bad as usual.  The train was the cleanest I've ever been in.  Oh, but the Swiss are clean.  An Ameri-