Chapter V. Second Journey in Europe.—Correspondence. 1850-1859

Dr. Gray sailed for England with Mrs. Gray in a sailing packet June 11, 1850. The steamers made regular trips, but the fine packets were still running, and it was thought desirable to try the longer voyage for Mrs. Gray’s health.

Dr. Gray renewed acquaintance with his old friends, and made many new ones, meeting at his friend Mr. Ward’s, where they first stayed, many of the younger men, Henfrey, Forbes, etc., who had become known in science since his former visit in 1839.

TO JOHN TORREY.

Ghent, Belgium, July 16, 1850.

I surely meant that you should have heard of us long ere this. But there seemed not to be a moment of time during the fortnight we spent in England; Mr. Ward kept us so busy with every sort of engagement and sight-seeing that J. could enjoy. I meant to have written at Dover last evening; but it was not convenient, so now that we are for the first night in a strange country (which England is not) I must tell you, what I trust you have learned from Carey (to whom I had occasion to write hurriedly, last mail), that we had a very pleasant voyage of seventeen and a half days and came near making it in fourteen, as we made land early on the morning of the twelfth day out, no storms, but gentle favoring breezes till we made the Irish coast; and then, to our disappointment, we had head winds to beat against all the way up to Holyhead, and reached Liverpool Saturday morning....

On Monday we left Liverpool, which has vastly improved since you saw it; stopping at Coventry and turning off to Leamington to see, at Darlington’s desire, the descendants of old Peter Collinson, and deliver some books and letters from him, which I did. Mrs. Collinson was ill with a severe fall, but her daughter received the things I brought, and showed me a portrait of Peter. Then Mrs. Gray and I made an excursion to Warwick Castle, the fine ruins of Kenilworth, and Stoneleigh Abbey, driving through six or seven miles of fine park. The next day on to London, to Ward, who had insisted on our visiting him. He lives three and a half miles out of London, in a pleasant and quiet suburban house; his son being established in Wellclose Square.

Boott I saw the same evening I arrived, and two days later, with J., but not later. He has been quite sick with an influenza, and a slight but not altogether pleasant inflammation of the lungs.

To Hooker I went at once also, and got your kind letter there, and saw Kew. Hooker is quite well; but Lady H. is very poorly.... She inquired most particularly and affectionately after yourself, and asked about all your family....

On Monday I made another visit to Kew Gardens, (a grand affair) to show the lions of the place to four or five young Americans I knew, one of them young Brace, J.’s cousin, who is making with two friends a pleasant and profitable pedestrian excursion in England. I cannot begin to tell you the half we have done and seen in England, but we were most busy: Saturday, conversazione of Royal Botanical Society in Regent’s Park. Wednesday, excursion with Linnæan Club to Hertford; saw a great Pinetum, 600 species of Coniferæ, etc., and the Panshanger Oak. (I wrote Carey a few words of this.) Thursday, a most pleasant day with Hooker. Miss Hooker looks quite well; all send their love to you, all most kind and sweet to us. Hooker has altered little, but looks older. Brown looks older perhaps, but decidedly stronger, is as healthy as possible and very lively. In talking with him and showing him about it he gave up about Krameria, and said I must be right. He formerly unequivocally referred it to Polygalaceæ. Bennett is large and fat. I fear he does not work hard enough.

Yesterday we came down to Dover early in the afternoon (a striking place), and embarked late in the evening on steamer for Ostend, which we reached early this morning; came right on to Bruges, which listless and very curious old-world town, and its curiosities, we have all day been exploring, till six o’clock, when we came on twenty-eight miles further by railway to the famous and more lively town of Ghent,—where I have been running about till the dusk arrived, and must now to bed, as we have to finish Ghent to-morrow before dinner, and go on to Antwerp afterwards, thence to Cologne. I think we shall cut Brussels.

At Ghent saw the Belfry and the strange old Town Hall.... I went to the Botanic Garden (did not find Professor Kickx),—hardly as large as ours at Cambridge, and by no means so rich or half so well kept, though said to be the best in Belgium; explored the university library, and strolled through the streets and along the canals....

Antwerp.—Imagine us settled comfortably at Hotel du Parc, Wednesday evening, overlooking the Place Verte, our windows commanding a near and most advantageous view of the finest cathedral in Belgium, with light enough still to see pretty well against the sky the graceful outlines and much of the light tracery and Gothic work of this gem of a steeple, one of the loftiest in the world (403 feet, 7 inches) and probably unsurpassed by any for lightness, grace, and the elaborateness of the carved work. Napoleon compared it to Mechlin lace. And such sweet chimes, every fifteen minutes! The chime at the beginning of the hour still rings in our ears. We have never tired of listening to it....

Bonn, July 22.

We drove through the city (Cologne) to the station of the Bonn railroad. But on the way the driver, of his own motion, stopped at the door of the cathedral. Finding that we had time enough to take a good look before the train left, we could not resist, and saw this wonder and masterpiece of true Gothic architecture; which by the united efforts of most North German powers is going on toward completion, in the style and plan on which it was commenced seven hundred or eight hundred years ago, and in which the choir was finished, and the transepts and nave commenced. It is most grand; the grandest thing we ever saw, though the nave bears only a temporary roof, at thirty or forty feet less than the full height. The ancient stained glass comes fully up to one’s expectation. I have never seen the like.

We went up to Poppelsdorf; such charming and picturesque view of the Siebengebirge (seven mountains) and the Godesberg, etc., from the professor’s windows and the Botanic Garden; the museums rich and curious, and parts of the old château in which they are (now surrendered to the university) not less so. The botanical professors, Treviranus and Dr. Roemer, very kind; some collections to be made ready here for me to examine when we come back, so that I must then spend a day here....

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

Geneva, August 16, 1850.

We went up the Rhine to Coblenz, Bingen, and Mayence; thence to Frankfort. By some mistake in the post office in giving me the address, your letter to Dr. Fresenius I took to a law-doctor Fresenius, who was away in Switzerland. So I gave up all hopes of seeing him, and we fell to seeing the sights by ourselves, when, a few hours before we had arranged to go to Heidelberg, the true Dr. Fresenius came in. We may see him again on our way back. We went to Heidelberg, for an hour or two only....

It is now the 20th,—time passed fast. I work to-day in herbariums De Candolle and Boissier, and to-morrow morning we go to Freiburg and Berne and the Bernese Oberland. We cannot be back now in England so early as we expected; but still hope to be there by the 20th September....

Thursday morning, after an early breakfast, went on by railroad to Kehl; left our luggage and took a carriage over the bridge of boats, across the lines of the French republic (?) into Strasburg. Saw Schimper; then we went to the cathedral, viewed the grand front of this imposing structure, and the wonderful spire, the tallest in the world; were much struck with the grandeur of the interior, wholly lighted by stained glass, the greater part of it 400 or 500 years old. After visiting the Museum of Natural History, and arranging with Schimper to meet him in Switzerland, where he is to pass with his wife (a Swiss lady) a long vacation, we took our carriage and returned to the Baden side of the river, and came on to Freiburg (in the Breisgau) that evening, reaching it in the rain....

Professor Braun, the brother of the first Mrs. Agassiz, was very kind to us. He is a very interesting man, of charming manners; his wife very sweet and charming, his children most engaging. Saturday afternoon we took a carriage, and with Professor Braun rode up a beautiful valley to the Höllenthal (French, Vallée d’Enfer), a rocky and wooded gorge of very striking scenery; wild and majestic, rather than terrible, as its name imports....

In the afternoon visited the cathedral, one of the finest and oldest in Europe, that is well preserved. Here nearly every part, and all the stained glass, of a most curious kind, is perfectly preserved; and the spire, though not so high as that of Strasburg, is as elaborate and light,—as it were of woven stone thread,—and even more beautiful....

Tuesday we rode from Bâle to Bienne (fifty-six miles) in a diligence, from eight A.M. to five P.M., through the Münster Thal, the grandest and most picturesque scenery of the Jura.

Wednesday, a ride of three hours along lakes of Bienne and Neuchâtel brought us to Neuchâtel at eleven o’clock A.M. ... Professor Godet, who received me most cordially, took me (with Mr. Coulon) up the Chaumont, 2,500 feet; but the Alps were obscured by clouds, at least the higher Alps, and we had no fine view of them; otherwise the view was very fine. We returned by the great boulder Pierre à Bot. All asked after Agassiz with much interest. Excursions are planned for us when we return....

Dr. Gray enjoyed the visit to Geneva, where he renewed his friendship with MM. Alphonse De Candolle and Boissier, accomplishing some useful work, and having pleasant social meetings and excursions. He went to Chamouni and the Bernese Oberland; then to Munich, especially to meet again Martius, with whom he had been in constant correspondence, and who made the journey from Tyrol to greet his old friend. Their few days together were greatly enjoyed.

He returned to England, going down the Neckar by steamboat to Heidelberg, then down the Rhine, and through Holland, where he saw Miquel in Amsterdam, rambling with him on a fête-day through the streets at evening, enjoying the queer sights; went to Leyden, meeting De Vriese, with whom was R. Brown (then staying in Leyden for a few days), and seeing the Botanic Garden, one of the oldest in Europe, and well known to Linnæus. Blume he missed, but he saw Siebold’s collection of Japanese curios, then most rare. He took steamer from Rotterdam to London, and after a few days went down to Mr. Bentham’s, in Herefordshire.

Here were spent two months of very hard work with Mr. Bentham, who most kindly went over with him the plants of the United States Exploring Expedition, which had been brought over the Atlantic for the purpose.

Pontrilas is in a pretty, hilly country on the border of Wales, with many old churches, almost of Saxon time, in the neighborhood, to give interest to walks, and very interesting, agreeable neighbors for a day or two’s visiting, among them the authoress, Mrs. Archer Clive, who was very kind.

He left Pontrilas early in December to make a visit, at Dublin, to his friend Professor Harvey, to stay in the family of Mr. and Mrs. Todhunter, Dr. Harvey’s sister. Going on board the steamer at ten in the evening, he met with the severe accident of which he gives an account in his letters. Dr. Harvey came from Dublin to help in nursing him. His vigor and elasticity helped him to a speedy recovery, but it increased a general tendency to stoop, and he was never so erect afterwards.

He was able to get to Kew the last of December, and spent the winter in hard work in Sir William Hooker’s herbarium, which was then in his house at West Park.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

Cumberland Place, Kew, December 28, 1850.

Your kind favor of December 6th, forwarded to me by Bentham, to Dublin, would have been sooner acknowledged, but that it found me an invalid. On our way from Hereford to Dublin I had just gone on board a steamer at Holyhead, early in the evening; had left Mrs. Gray in the ladies’ cabin, when, coming on deck again, I stepped over an open hatchway which had been left for the moment very carelessly unguarded and unlighted. I fell full eighteen feet, they say, to the bottom of the hold, striking partly on my right hand and the side of my right leg, bruising and straining both, but principally on my right side against a timber projecting from the floor, fracturing two of my ribs. It is truly wonderful that I was not more seriously and permanently injured. I was taken on shore at once and had good medical attendance. I recovered so rapidly that in a week I was comfortably taken across to Dublin, where I was kindly cared for by good friends; in two weeks more I left for London, able to walk without difficulty; and to-day, just four weeks after the accident, I have begun to work at plants again, in Sir William Hooker’s herbarium. But my side is still tender, and my strength is not great.

Having said thus much of my bodily condition, let me no longer delay to thank you heartily for the very unexpected compliment that you have caused to be paid me, and to ask you to convey, in fitting terms, my grateful acknowledgments to the Société de Physique et d’Histoire Naturelle, for the honor they have conferred upon me in choosing me as one of their corresponding members. I was not aware that I had rendered any particular services to your society, but I shall be very glad to do so if any opportunity offers. Although, generally, I am far from coveting compliments of this kind, I assure you I am much pleased to be thus associated with several valued personal friends, my contemporaries, and with such highly honored names of the past generation....

We had eight weeks of most pleasant and profitable labor at Pontrilas, and Mr. Bentham has rendered me invaluable assistance.

Mrs. Gray joins me in the expression of kind remembrances and regard to Madame De Candolle and yourself.

Believe me to remain, ever most sincerely yours,

Asa Gray.

Since Dr. Gray was so near Sir William, and working in the herbarium almost every day, there was much meeting of old friends, and of many of the men distinguished in botany. Robert Brown, with his keen observation and dry wit, he saw constantly at the British Museum, Dr. Wallich, Mr. Miers and many others. There was some social visiting in London and the neighborhood. Mr. Abbott Lawrence was then American minister in London, and he and Mrs. Lawrence were very kind and attentive, giving him a chance to see at an evening reception some of the great men of the London world: the Duke of Wellington, Lady Morgan, Whewell the Master of Trinity, Lord Boughton, Lord Gough, and many others.

It was the year of the first great World’s Exhibition, and the building was then considered very wonderful. Through the kindness of Professor Lindley he was enabled to see it before it was completed.

There was a very charming visit to Oxford in March, where Dr. Gray made most delightful acquaintances. He there first met Dean Church, then a fellow of Oriel, who had him to dine. He also dined with Mr. Congreve at Wadham; met Maskeleyne, who showed him “some fine talbotypes, which are a sort of daguerreotype on paper, and have a beautiful effect for landscapes and buildings.” Breakfasted with Mr. Burgon and Mr. Church, at Oriel, in Dr. Pusey’s old rooms, and met Mr. Burgon again at dinner, when dining in the “Common Room,” at a dinner given him by Mr. Church, and also Buckle and Sclater. Dr. Jacobson, then Regius professor of divinity, afterwards Bishop of Chester, and Mrs. Jacobson, were very kind. Dr. Daubeny was then professor of botany at Oxford, and there were some plants to look at in the small herbarium kept in the little Botanic Garden in an old greenhouse. The days were crowded with interesting sight-seeing and in meeting agreeable people.

From Oxford, Dr. Gray went to Cambridge, where he met again a traveling acquaintance made on the passage from Rotterdam, Dr. Thompson, then Greek tutor, later Master of Trinity, who was very kind in doing the honors of Trinity, King’s Chapel, etc. At his rooms, Dr. Gray met Professor Challis and other Cambridge men. The grounds about the colleges were then at their greatest beauty, the banks of the Cam yellow with primroses, the whole setting off the beautiful bridges and stately buildings. Another traveling acquaintance met in the street, recalling an experience on the Furca, asked Dr. Gray to dine with him at Caius College, saying his name was Mackenzie. He was Bishop Mackenzie, who died in south Africa.

On returning to Kew, Dr. Gray found Dr. Joseph Hooker, just back from his journey to the Himalayas and Thibet. Dr. Thompson was also there, just home from India, where he had been imprisoned with Lady Sale and others, twenty of them in one small room, during the trouble in Afghanistan. And one day came an invitation to lunch from the Hookers’, “to meet Mr. Darwin, who is coming to meet Dr. Hooker; is distinguished as a naturalist.” “Mr. Darwin was a lively, agreeable person” [Mrs. Gray’s journal].

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

5 Cumberland Place, Kew, April 14, 1851.

For myself I am glad that I am perfectly recovered from the effects of my accident, and am as active as ever. I have passed a very pleasant winter, and have prosecuted my studies to great advantage, though there still remains, alas! more for me to do than I can hope to accomplish in the time that is still left for me. Your letter was just in time to reach me here; for we had just decided to go to Paris early next week; to remain there until the 1st of June, at least. The only drawback is that we thereby lose the society of Mr. and Mrs. Bentham, who mean to come to London early next month....

Sir William Hooker is not yet well, though better than he was last winter. I have presented your kind messages, for which he sends best thanks, and is rejoiced to hear of your recovery. Sir William is truly a noble man; the more intimately you know him the more strongly attached to him you become....

I had thought it quite likely that we might pass through Geneva again this summer; but that is not now possible. The sea, however, is not so broad as formerly. Believe me to remain,

Very faithfully and affectionately yours,
Asa Gray.

In April Dr. and Mrs. Gray went to Paris, where he worked busily through the mornings at the Jardin des Plantes, taking the afternoon for his sight-seeing. He met again his old friends, Jussieu, Decaisne, Gay, etc., and made the acquaintance of M. and Mme. Vilmorin, both most charming and interesting people; the former distinguished as a horticulturist, and both making investigations for many years on the varieties of strawberries, for which Mme. V. made all the drawings. Two separate days were passed at Verrières, their country home, an old villa belonging formerly to the Duchesse de la Vallière. And here to meet him came old Michaux the younger, then eighty-one, who had walked from his home (fifteen leagues), for the pleasure of seeing Dr. Gray. And it was at Dr. Gray’s request that both Michaux and Jussieu sat for their daguerreotypes for him, the only satisfactory likenesses of either. Mr. François Delessert extended pleasant hospitalities, and Mr. Webb was very kind and cordial.

It was during the time of the Republic, Louis Napoleon, president, and there were some grand fêtes in May, in honor of the Republic, at which the officers of the government were conspicuously absent.

Dr. Gray returned to Kew in June to continue his work, broken only by some days in London.

TO GEORGE BENTHAM.

Paris, April 30, 1851.

Dear Bentham,—I cannot give your message to Weddell, for he is on his way to the Peruvian cinchona forests, to remain a year,—I suppose on a commission from the manufacturers of quinine. Jussieu still suffers with some affection of the stomach, but is much better than last winter. Decaisne is quite well, but is occupied with the Culture, and is little in the herbarium, where Spach, Tulasne, Naudin, and Trécul are in charge, under Brongniart and Jussieu. Webb is well, and so is Gay, who is quite happy, living on his half pay, which the Republic has secured to him, with his rooms free of rent, and some savings from his former income. I have not seen Gaudichaud yet; but he has offered to come and show me his Sandwich Island collections, etc., of which he has issued some plates, in “La Voyage de la Bonite,” but no text has appeared, and none seems likely to appear.

I gave to Dr. Alexander the list and notes on Fendler’s Chagres plants. He will hand it to you when he sees you in London.

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

Paris, May 6, 1851.

Robert Brown told me that Link would be succeeded in his excellent and lucrative professorship either by Grisebach or by our excellent friend Braun. Since I have been here, a young man from Berlin says that the choice has fallen on Braun,—to my great joy, for I love Braun very much. I have given Lowell, who leaves Paris to-day, and will be in Germany in June and July, a letter to Braun, addressed to Giessen or Berlin.

Prince Paul’s sensitive branches of Mimosa catching unwary travelers is rich!

TO ——.

Wednesday morning, June 11.

Settled down to usual Kew routine; glad enough to get back to quiet and superlative neatness; to less elegance than our Parisian quarters, but decidedly more comfort. The only thing that distresses us is, that we cannot translate dear Mrs. Crook bodily to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Sure we would if she were younger; but the dear old creature will now erelong be translated to a far better land.... Unpacked (which in interminableness is only second to packing up) and went down to the Hookers’....

Friday, after writing and dispatching letters home, we went up to London, shopped, etc., in the City; streets nasty (the English word is very appropriate; no wonder they always use it), and such a contrast to beautiful and gay Paris, which is vastly more convenient and agreeable for shopping....

Saturday, ... a little stroll in the Gardens, which are looking beautifully, the trees loaded with rich foliage, and the great masses of Rhododendrons in blossom.

In the evening went with Dr. Hooker up to the last soirée of Lord Rosse, the president of the Royal Society; too late to see Prince Albert, who came and went early; saw the usual dons. Sir Charles Lyell asked if I had stayed abroad all the time since last year, or had just come over afresh!...

Wednesday, we were off early in the morning, to make our first visit to the Great Exhibition. We went up to town by railroad as usual; walked over Waterloo bridge, and having reached the Strand, had the satisfaction of seeing nine omnibuses pass westward, all full. Despairing of all hope of getting into an omnibus, we were just turning to look for a cab, when a well-dressed and respectable woman, who had been making similar unsuccessful attempts, rushed up to us, exclaiming, “Oh! are you going to the Exhibition? Will you not take a cab with me? I have been trying for an omnibus in vain this half hour, and I have made an appointment with some friends there at half past ten.” We agreed at once to this reasonable and very convenient proposition, and we shared the expense accordingly, with many expressions of thanks on the lady’s part. Before we had reached within half a mile of the Crystal Palace we were obliged to fall into dense line, with a close double file of cabs, carriages, dog-carts, and other “vehicular conveyances,” all wending their way thither, a similar file of empty carriages returning on the other side of the street; the sidewalks as well as the roads inside the park all crowded with pedestrians. Early as we were, a vast number of people were already there, but scattered through the vast interior, they scarcely made a crowd, until midday, when the more attractive parts of the structure, the principal streets and squares, so to say, were thronged.

As to what we saw, is it not written at length in the great Official Catalogue (as far as that ponderous document is yet published), besides the Abridged Catalogue, in itself quite a sizable book, which we mean to bring home, with the Synopsis, and other things, quite a library, and I dare say you have heard and read quite enough about it. I doubt whether you have seen the excellent and spirited articles in the “Times,” beginning long before the building was finished, which give a most admirable and lively account of everything.

The general impression of the interior was not quite so imposing, did not give such an idea of the vastness, as when we saw it in April, less full, and the long spaces unbroken.

On our way down the nave, we stopped for a moment to see the Koh-i-noor, but the Mountain of Light looked to us little brighter than a piece of cut-glass. It does not come up to the general expectation. Manage it as they will, it does not shine at all wonderfully, and the people got it into their heads that the authorities were shamming them with a glass imitation instead of the veritable Koh-i-noor; an idea well expressed in “Punch,” who called it “the knave of diamonds.” We determined to show our patriotism by going first of all carefully through the American department, and quite a trial to one’s patriotism it is, a great space, very scantily filled with an ill-assorted, incongruous collection (although they have given up to Russia and France about one quarter of the space that Mr. Lawrence asked for and insisted upon having): one long shelf displayed only half a dozen wooden pails; another side was decorated with a miserable collection of cast-off specimens of autumn-leaves, and below with a case containing five or six dozen bottles of prepared magnesia, all just alike, flanked at the sides with a similar collection of Old Jacob Townsend’s Sarsaparilla, surmounted by a portrait of the illustrious inventor. The strength of the nation has gone to daguerreotypes, of which there are about two thousand very good specimens of the art, it must be said, far better than they can produce in England. The same may be said of many things, creditable in themselves, but of which they have filled up their space, or attempted to fill it, with an enormous number of specimens, where one or two would suffice. But wherever anything is quite poor and commonplace, the exhibitor is sure to make it up in brag, in which it must be confessed we do “beat all creation.”

Monday we went to the Zoölogical Gardens, very extensive, in fine keeping, the richest collection of living animals of all sorts in the world. Were very much amused with monkeys of all sorts and sizes, from those little larger than a rat to the great and sedate orang-outang, just arrived, who is quite a human and a very respectable grave old fellow. We saw the hippopotamus, too, but he lay sleeping in the sun, and would give no sign of life except occasionally opening his eye and giving a wink. But one of the most amusing sights was the little suckling elephant, with its mother, and it was curious to see the little thing use its trunk as perfectly and knowingly as its mother.... We stayed to see the ferocious animals fed, at half past four, no great sight, as they behaved extremely proper, and then we hurried back to the station and came home to Kew.

A short visit to the British Museum, which is an immense collection of objects of natural history, sculpture, books, antiquities, etc., etc. Had some botanical work in the herbarium there (the British Museum), but did not do anything that day, for we spent the time talking to Mr. Brown, who was in quite a chatty mood. He is a singular-looking man, with a very heavy lower lip and jaw, and generally carries his head down; but it is curious to watch him, and see how he kindles up, and what a satirical twinkle comes in the corner of his eyes when he tells some story, for he has a good deal of satire.

Dr. Gray went to the meeting of the British Association at Ipswich, where Prince Albert came for a few days. Dr. Hooker and Dr. Harvey (who had been making a visit at Kew), and other scientific friends, were there. Among other discussions in one of the sections was one on the possibility of a railroad to the Pacific, a paper by Asa Whitney, “which had been brought before the Geographical Society in London, and reported on favorably.”

From Ipswich he made a most interesting visit to Lady Hooker’s father, Dawson Turner, seeing his very valuable collections, autographs, pictures, etc., and returning to Kew to work until breaking up to go back to America. A short trip was made in Ireland, and Dr. Gray went to Pontrilas to say goodby to Mr. and Mrs. Bentham, immediately before the voyage. Dr. and Mrs. Gray were again at home, September 4.

After Dr. Gray’s return from Europe, his busy life went on, filled with college work and the care of the Garden as accompaniments to a study of the new collections constantly coming in, the work on the Exploring Expedition, the keeping his various botanical text-books in their new editions up with the advancing science, and his always large correspondence. His letters were chiefly on the questions upon which he was working, but with many touches on events of interest of the day, and little playful turns. He says in a letter to Dr. Engelmann, “I well know I have too many irons in the fire.”

Unfortunately, Mr. Darwin destroyed all the letters he received before 1862, except the one published in his “Life and Letters,” which is inserted later, as well as one to Sir Joseph Hooker taken from the same volume. The rest of those to Sir Joseph are mostly bound up in the botanical correspondence at Kew.

Dr. Gray was an immense worker. After his morning mail was received and looked over, that he might answer any imperative questions, he took daylight for his scientific work, and, with pauses for meals, and the necessary interruptions that came at times, he kept steadily on all the day. He wrote his letters and his elementary botanical works mostly in the evening. But in his younger days his eyes were unusually strong, and he would work with the microscope by lamp-light as readily as by daylight.

Though a steady and unwearying worker he was not rapid. He would throw aside sheet after sheet to be rewritten, especially if there was anything he wished to make particularly clear and strong, or any reasoning to be worked out from the soundest point of view. It was always a wonder to those about him that he could stand as he did the unceasing labor, but he was a sound sleeper even if the hours might be short, and of a vigorous, wiry, active temperament, and when he did take a holiday, he took it heartily. His rest and recreation were in journeys, longer or shorter, and every two or three years some long outing would be taken, to give him the needed refreshment. But he must always be busy even then, somewhere to go, something to see; rest in quiet seemed impossible to him for more than a day at a time.

TO CHARLES WRIGHT.

Cambridge, January 23, 1852.

I am printing on “Plantæ Wrightianæ,” the first part of which (as I work in so much general matter, especially Tex-Mexican), to the end of Compositæ, will take 225 pages or more, with ten plates,—the most important memoir I ever wrote, and will indelibly fix our name on the Texan-New-Mexican Flora....

I have just found a letter of Sullivant’s, dated May 27, 1850, in which he says, “Send me by all means Wright’s Texan Mosses and Hepaticæ....”

Poor fellow! as I wrote you before, he lost his wife while I was away, and was overwhelmed, as she was everything to him, and as good a muscologist almost as he....

You are in a fine field. Hold on and keep a good heart. I long to see what Colonel Graham is now bringing on to me....

June 5.

There, my dear Wright, I consider myself very much of a gentleman! For your favor of the 12th April reached me only this afternoon, and now before the sun has gone down I am answering it! Your letter came very opportunely too. For, though Colonel Graham has been back so long, it was only yesterday that I got the collection he brought home with him to Indianola (and the seeds); and to-day I opened it and had looked over only two bundles. And I was saying to myself, Now if I only had Mr. Wright’s list with localities, I should do very well. And when my letters came from the office, yours, with said list inclosed, was among them. The plants look well, but I have only peeped into them yet. I am glad if you have found Amoreuxia malvafolia, but I have not yet hit upon it....

I am still very busy with college work, for a month longer, and with the Garden; and the Exploring Expedition work has been pressing me, and still will. But I shall somehow distribute your 1851 collection very soon, name them up to the end of Compositæ, and in the course of the summer determine many of the monopetalous families. I have already named and described a few of these and some Apetalæ to please Colonel Graham, and named a new Pentstemon after him (which I have growing, too), which compliment seems to gratify him.

By this time you will have received the index and plates of “Plantæ Wrightianæ.” Copies are already in England, and I am about to dispatch many to France, Germany, etc.

You are indeed an invaluable collector, though you do like to grumble now and then, and I hope the Indians won’t catch you. If they must take a scalp or a head, there are others I could better spare. So take care of yourself....

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

February 23, 1852.

I carefully keep your flowering bit of Fendlera, ready to return it if Lindheimer does not get more, as I trust he will. It is the most interesting of North American genera, between Deutzia and Philadelphus, and shows plainly that both are saxifragaceous....

July 28.

I am worked almost to distraction. But college work is now over and I can get on with fewer irons in the fire.

I fear you are driven up hard also, by the sickly season and cholera. I hope you may be able to give up practice by and by....

I have had for a good while a misunderstanding with Captain Wilkes about my work for the Exploring Expedition botany. It is now made up, I think, or nearly, but I have had no pay from them for a long time, and they are a year behind in paying. I have got manuscript of several families all ready for the press, and some fine drawings. I am just now working up “Plantæ Wrightianæ,” 1851 collection, up to end of Compositæ, old stopping-place, but must dash beyond that soon....

TO W. J. HOOKER.

Cambridge, December 4, 1852.

Here is a discovery! I have to-day received by post from Dr. J. F. Beaumont, of Mountain Home, in the upper part of Alabama, specimens of a Trichomanes, which he finds growing there under shelving rocks. I send you herewith the half of what is sent me, knowing you will be much interested in the discovery, for the first time, of a Trichomanes in the United States; and thinking that you will probably pronounce it to be a form of the T. radicans, though so much smaller than my Irish and West Indian specimens.... I have not specimens enough of T. radicans to satisfy myself entirely, and refer the question to your experienced judgment. Pray give me your opinion, for the addition of a single species to our few ferns, and especially one of this group, is a matter of moment to us, and worthy of a published notice.

I should not be so greatly surprised now if Hymenophyllum ciliatum, credited by Willdenow to Virginia, should turn up, but I still think there was some mistake about that; and I could find no specimen in Willdenow’s herbarium when I sought for it, in 1839....

Next Wednesday’s steamer, which takes this letter, will also take, for a short European tour, my good father-in-law, Mr. Loring, with Mrs. Loring, and Mrs. Gray’s brother Charles. A rather sudden determination, but we have strongly urged the journey ever since the death of their dear little boy, the little Benjamin, who seemed given to be the comfort and stay of their declining years, who was born just before our return home, a year ago last summer. The rest and change are needful to Mr. Loring, also, from being worn down by his long-continued labors at the bar, of which he is perhaps the leader in Boston; I am confident it will be of great benefit to him; and the Old World has much to interest a man of his refined taste.... And then Kew Garden is to them one of the wonders of the world, as well as a place with which they have, through us, so many pleasant associations. Should you wish them to enjoy the privilege of seeing the Gardens under your own kind auspices, would you notify Mr. Loring through Boott (for I do not now know what will be their London address), of a day that would be agreeable and convenient to yourself....

January 4, 1853.

Wright will now soon be off in Ringgold’s North Pacific Surveying Expedition, to explore Behring Straits, Kurile Islands, the coast of Japan, if possible, and to winter at the Sandwich Islands.

So we shall have no more New Mexican plants from him.

My new memoir, “Plantæ Wrightianæ,” is now almost all printed, and contains many novelties. I never had a collection so rich in entirely new things.

I long to hear what you will say of the Trichomanes from Alabama which I sent you.

With best wishes for the new year to you and all yours, I remain,

Yours affectionately,
Asa Gray.

January 28, 1853.

“It never rains but it pours” is an old adage suitable to this meridian and illustrated by what I now send you, namely, a second Trichomanes from Alabama! discovered by the indefatigable Thomas M. Peters, Esq., of Moulton, who (and not Mr. Beaumont, it appears) was the first finder of Trichomanes radicans in Alabama.

This one seems to me clearly a new one....

I think it particularly appropriate in this case that it should bear the name of its discoverer, so I have called it Trichomanes Petersii, and have sent a little article on it and Trichomanes radicans to “Silliman’s Journal.” ...

In 1853 began Dr. Gray’s long correspondence with the Dean of St. Paul’s—a friendship whose intimacy was ever increasing and which lasted through his life.

TO R. W. CHURCH.

February 7, 1853.

My dear Mr. Church,—Since I heard, which I did first from Mr. Clough, that you were about to marry and take charge of a parish, I have been longing every time I wrote to England to add a line expressing my most sincere congratulations. I hope you will not think me too presuming if I make bold to do so, and if I ask you where your parish is, for I would gladly form some idea of where your home is to be. Pleasant and desirable on many accounts as an Oxford life must be, yet I cannot but think you more appropriately placed in the pleasant parsonage I can fancy, the centre of a little world of your own, and the spiritual guide of an attached body of parishioners, where you will be very happy and very useful.

Still let us hope that the visit to Cambridge, New England, is only deferred, to afford us a double gratification. I think you can sometimes leave your parish for three months, or even more with special leave, and the voyage is becoming shorter and cheaper every year.

I have looked through the “Times,” which I see regularly through the kindness of a friend, thinking that I might perchance see your appointment, presentation, or whatever it may be, mentioned; but in vain.

By the way, I am glad to see that you have elected Mr. Gladstone. Your name on the Oxford Committee makes me suppose you have not yet left Oxford.

Dr. Albro has returned in restored health, and speaks with much gratification of his visit to Oxford, only regretting that your absence prevented his making your acquaintance until the last moment of his short stay.

Mr. Clough brought me a letter from Maskelyne of Wadham College. Circumstances, I am sorry to say, have yet prevented me from seeing him here as much as I could wish. I hope soon to know him better. He has excellent and influential acquaintances; but one hardly sees what he is to do.

If he holds Unitarian views, as I have been told, he will perhaps be more favorably situated, just in Boston or Cambridge, than in England, and probably meet more cultivated and more religious people of that persuasion than at home. But if he sympathizes rather with Francis Newman and that school, as some one tells me, I should think he would not find that class of people here very attractive to him. But I hope that is not his bent. I have no partiality for Unitarianism, though it is the faith of near and valued friends. I am an orthodox Presbyterian, as my fathers were. But in England I should be a Churchman, although a pretty low one, at least in some respects; and I am a most hearty well-wisher to the Church of England. So pray, when settled in your parish, just drop me a line to say where you are, and how old your parish church is; for hankering after antiquities is, as an Oxford man told me, a great failing of Americans.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

Cambridge, March 28, 1853.

My dear Friend,—I am all the more glad that I can direct your attention to the fourth volume (new series) of the “Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,” p. 382, where you will find your name enrolled as the sole Honorary Member for Switzerland.

Ordinarily neither you nor I would be at all solicitous for such recognition. I care not to have them except where (as in the Linnæan Society of London, the French Academy, and your own society of Geneva) I well know the nominations are strictly and conscientiously weighed, and where the list to be filled is a limited one. But we here prize the name of De Candolle so highly that we count it a privilege to have it on our foreign list....

I should state that this academy, the oldest but one in America, was in a state of inactivity and hebetude since the death of its former president, Bowditch, till 1843, the year after I came to Cambridge, when it was determined, chiefly by some of my colleagues in Cambridge, to restore it to life and vigor. It is now full of life. The number of its foreign members is now limited to seventy-five, and they are chosen by a very formal process and a very rigid scrutiny, so as to have only the very best names in the several departments of knowledge. Formerly they were chosen without such care; so that there are names on the list that could not be placed there now. Hereafter the list will be a most select one....

Hereafter we will send our parcels through the Smithsonian Institution and through its agent, Mr. Hector Bossange, Paris. You justly praise the publications of this institution. It is on the point of issuing another splendid volume; and at least one a year will continue to be issued.

Liberal in its distribution, the Smithsonian Institution looks to its exchanges as a means of building up a library valuable for scientific researches in this country. You may remember that, when at Geneva, I ventured to ask you to recommend to the Société de Physique et d’Histoire Naturelle de Genève, to vote its series of memoirs to the Smithsonian Institution. But you thought it would not then be quite proper to request it. Now that the institution has given such evidences of its vigor and productiveness, and that I can assure you it is only beginning to do its work, and that in number of volumes it will soon overtake you, I venture to renew the request which I was then requested to make; and I think that your society, with these assurances, and in view of the good offices of the Smithsonian in promoting interchanges (at no small expense), would freely accord the earlier volumes of its memoirs, on your proposition....

Dr. Harris has made interesting researches on the plants cultivated by our aborigines, which I urge him to publish; but he is one of those persons who are never quite ready to print as long as they live.

I have long suspected that Helianthus tuberosus came from North America. I should like to study from what indigenous species it comes....

As to the “Botany of the South Sea Exploring Expedition,” the manuscript and the drawings are ready up nearly to the Leguminosæ; and the printing, which is not under my control, is about to commence. The work will probably make three quarto volumes and 300 folio plates. I shall be sure to have a copy to send you. As to the specimens, there are few duplicates; and of these I am not myself allowed to retain any. Possibly, hereafter, some may be awarded to me. That expedition did not land on the high Antarctic coasts it saw, and therefore made no collections there. Its Antarctic collection is all from Orange Harbor, Tierra del Fuego, and has little that is new.

The most interesting part of the collection was made at the Sandwich and Feejee islands.

My wife and I well remember what a charming place Vallon is, and retain pleasant memories of our trip to the Salève under the charge of Madame De Candolle, despite the bad weather which spoiled the view. We should delight to revisit Switzerland. Having no children, it is not impossible that we may do so; but the time, I fear, is far in the future....

I have written a much longer letter than I had intended when I began.

Believe me to remain, yours very faithfully,

Asa Gray.

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

Cambridge, July 14, 1853.

My dear Engelmann,—This cover has been addressed to you for a long while, but I have delayed to fill and close it, not so much because you had not written, for I knew you must be very busy now, but because the convenient time has not exactly come. For I have been very busy. College work done up only last week; printing of “Exploring Expedition Botany,” in which I have read proofs up to 220 pages, and gave to-night finished manuscript (except a few crooked points to settle in a family or two) up to the end of Rosaceæ (which will make about 450 pages. It fills up fast with the open pages adopted in these reports). I shall carry on the volume to 550 or 650 pages, and the plates folio, already 56, shall carry up to 100, if I can. There is next some tough work in Myrtaceæ and Melastomaceæ; but as to the latter Naudin has much cleared the way. Those done, and I think I may venture to work part of the time on the Lindheimer, Fendler, and Wright Monopetalæ.

Agassiz returned most delighted with his visit to you, and we talked much of you....

I am afraid to touch Gregg’s Mexican plants, for fear of the time they would consume. In “Exploring Expedition,” I branch out little or none, except a few notes in Malvaceæ, and probably more in Compositæ.

If I could do the work abroad, I could work up collateral things most advantageously; but the means here at disposal are too poor.

Still, you will be pleased with my volume i. when I finish and send it to you (the letterpress this fall!).

No specimens scarcely of Cactaceæ in collection Exploring Expedition,—a drawing or two. I shall send them on to you presently....

I grieve to tell you that Adrien de Jussieu is dead. Cancer in the stomach, his tedious malady proves to have been. It makes a deep impression on the scientific men, and the public, too, in Paris. He was much my most intimate correspondent in France, a true friend, and a charming man.

You know, perhaps, that Moquin-Tandon has succeeded the late Achille Richard at L’Ecole de Médecine. Tulasne, I suppose, will be the new professor at the Jardin des Plantes; at least he ought to be, as he is the most able man.

No farther news since my last.

Agassiz looks poorly and says he is not well....

I never could get Fouquiera up. To-day I have sown some seeds, and put on my own table, by the window, to watch....

18th August.

Agassiz handed me your note about the Compass plant. I took him at once into the Garden, to see Silphium laciniatum, terebinthinaceum, and pinnatifidum.

He agreed there was no direction to be made out, one way more than another. The cauline leaves all tend to become vertical (as in several other Compositæ), but present neither face nor edge north.

But three years ago Lapham of Wisconsin wrote me that, though the plant near Milwaukee showed no “polarity” (and so he never believed in it), yet on going farther west, on the prairies, he found it did generally turn all to the north there.

If I remember aright, though, he said the surfaces of the leaf look north and south. You say the edges? How is this? Compare notes with Lapham....

What do you think I am about now? Revising genera of Myrtaceæ for Exploring Expedition collection.

In these exotic orders I frequently find the genera so at loose ends that I cannot make the plants of our collection lie comfortably till I have given the genera a good shaking up. I should be tempted to do much more of this if I could work at Hooker’s, or in Paris. It is quite as well not, as it would cost no end of time....

I have found some Fouquiera seedlings up in the Garden. I am right about it; not Torrey. The leaf is not axillary and its petiole inclosed in the spine; but the spine is a hardened inferior portion of the petiole that persists, and from which the rest falls away clean....

TO W. J. HOOKER.

Cambridge, August 3, 1853.

My dear Sir William,—I will endeavor to get some account of Shakerdom for you. They are a queer people indeed.

Manilla paper is made of old manilla rope, which is largely used by our shipping. But what plant yields the manilla hemp for this cordage I have not the means of knowing, that is, whether the Musa textilis or no. I have been promised specimens of the stem of the plant, etc. But the climate makes our countrymen indolent there, and forgetful. I will ask for statistics as to the paper manufacture....

I shall be pleased to have you figure as many of our ferns as you can; and pray give names to all new species without hesitation. They will be more fitly named by the describer than by any one else.

I note with satisfaction what you write about genera of ferns. This pushing a single character (as venation) without regard to consequences, and giving it the same importance when it does not accord with habit as when it does, is the fault of most botanologists who restrict their view to one subject or one idea only. I am glad that you will carefully revise the genera on your own judgment.

By the way, the fern I sent you last spring, and which you called Asplenium montanum, Willd. (a species I used to know well), struck the collector (Beaumont), as it did me, to be different. Pray collate, and perhaps figure it, as well as the ordinary A. montanum.

I was grieved to hear of the death of Adr. de Jussieu, with whom I have had a very pleasant correspondence for the last three years, and to whom I was attached as to no other Frenchman. His late letters were so cheerful and lively, and even hopeful, that the news of his death took me by surprise, notwithstanding the steady failure of his health for a long while....

We remember with interest that dear Harvey sets out to-morrow on his long voyage.

TO R. W. CHURCH.

Christmas Eve, 1853.

My dear Mr. Church,—It is a good time to remember old friends and to bring up, as well as one may, arrears of neglected duty. I have long unaccountably neglected to acknowledge your letter of the 24th August, and to thank you most heartily for the interesting volume of your collected reviews, which reached me a little earlier (I know not how it was so long delayed between New York and Cambridge), and which I have received and read with much pleasure, that is, all I have yet read. For I am saving the article on Dante for my first leisure hour. The first I read was the article on Pascal and Ultramontanism, of which I greatly admire the delicate and thorough handling.

I wish I could send you something of any interest. But I am not well enough satisfied with the elementary work which I use as a text-book for my lower classes to offer it; and besides that I have published, since last in England, only memoirs of the botany of our new western regions, one volume of the botany of a Government South Sea Expedition, etc., all dreadfully dry and technical.

I have been unusually busy this year, and am just now especially so, having to complete the preparation of nine lectures on Vegetation, which I am to give before the Smithsonian Institution at Washington next month.

I do not much fancy popular lecturing, and do this only to please a very valued friend, Professor Henry, the secretary of this institution. This over, I shall return to my regular plodding work at home, with great satisfaction.

I do not wonder that you feel a little nervous about the result of the experiment at Oxford. I can well understand it, and if I were an Oxford man, which I should count it a high honor to have been, I should share the feeling. I count it an excellent thing that the new enactments were framed by friendly hands, and are not very sweeping. As far as I can judge from the election of the present council, those of the Movement party by no means have it all their own way.

It seems to me that the admission of Dissenters to the A. B. degree is a wise measure, and one that will do no harm to the university nor the church. But I see not how they can go further. It would not be right that they should pass to the A. M. and share in the government of the university.

Any position at Oxford or Cambridge which allows of matrimony must be a desirable one for a person of scholarly pursuits. I can hardly think you will pass your life at Whatley, but trust you will have some better preferment and a wider field of duty before long, before Mrs. Gray and myself will be likely to pay you the visit you kindly solicit, for I see no near prospect of our revisiting England, though nothing would please us more....

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

7th December, 1853.

I got dreadfully behindhand with everything. “Exploring Expedition Botany” stopped printing for a long time, but is now renewed; three hundred or more pages are printed, and copy sent to printer up to Leguminosæ (excl.). Meanwhile, to look over Brackenridge’s manuscript of the Filices, to turn a loose ungrammatical lingo into English, and his English characters into Latin, is a tedious job; then to read his proofs is another. But if I did not do all this, very bad work indeed would be made of it. Late in October Mrs. Gray and I went to New York for a week, to visit Torrey and to see the New York Exhibition. Returning, I had to bear my part in a course of lectures, which the American Academy gave to the public (to replenish our publication funds); and to prepare and deliver my two lectures, on the relations of plants to the sun, cost me almost the whole of November.

Sprague is too slow, and too feeble in health, to do half what I want done, let alone others. I must import an additional draughtsman. If you know any in Germany good enough, who would come out, let me know at once. If not, I must try at Paris....

TO CHARLES WRIGHT.

May 21, 1853.

The Kurile Islands will be a fine field; and I hope you can do much among them. Collect some specimens of everything you see there....

Cambridge, February 19, 1854.

Sinner that I am, I have four letters of yours unanswered; the last from Simon’s Bay, November 4th. The fact is I do not find time to write half the letters I ought, and those, like yours, which are not to be dispatched on some particular day, I am sure to postpone and neglect interminably. It seems so vague, too, to be writing to a man, you know not where, somewhere on the other side of the world, and you know not when the epistle may reach him, say six months hence.

Nor is it easy to reflect and remember what I have been doing, so as to tell you....

I forgot to tell you, too, that Thurber called on me and offered his plants collected under Bartlett. I have written out the greater part up to the end of Compositæ, my old sticking-place, a number of new things, mostly from deeper down in Sonora than you went, and in southwest California. Beyond doubt Torrey will work up a part. I shall merely furnish characters and botanical remarks to Thurber, and let him do all the rest of the talk. Bartlett is still in hopes that the Senate will print a great report for him. I greatly doubt if they do. If so, Thurber’s botany will go as an appendix. If not, he will make a memoir of the things up to Compositæ, and the striking things beyond, and afterwards I may lick up the rest in the general continuation of “Plantæ Wrightianæ,” etc.

Meanwhile the United States minister at Mexico has been making a treaty, now before our Senate, for buying a further slice of Chihuahua and Sonora, to take in Lake Guzman and the Sonora country some way south of where you went, that is, below San Pedro. So there will have to be a new survey if this treaty is ratified, and a chance of more botany. I wish you were to be here to attend to it; only you have already taken off the cream of that country, and can now do more, and find more novelty, in some of the countries you are going to.

From Governor Stevens’s party, from Minnesota to Washington Territory, north of Oregon, bundles of plants are sent home to Baird and by him forwarded to me. Wretched specimens, and nothing new among them!...

Captains at sea are very apt to get a little crusty, which should be minded just as little as possible. I expect to hear that, after getting well settled and at home in the Vincennes, you find yourself comfortable and all pleasant. Gentlemanly conduct and devotion to one’s pursuits will at length make one respected, anywhere.

When you return, I trust you will yourself prepare the botanical report of your cruise. I hope so, for your own sake, both scientifically and because your doing so will keep you on pay some years longer on shore. I will aid you, if I live, most willingly over knotty points, etc.; perhaps would like to do certain families further than that; not, if you will take hold of it yourself, as you ought to do.

I suppose you will have found nothing new at the Cape, though the vegetation there must have been novel to you. It will be pleasant, in the long cruises, to study yourself the plants collected at the last port. Did you get any nice Algæ? Look out for them hereafter.

When you are on surveying-ground, you may probably be transferred back to the steamer again.

Presently your letters will be coming to me via California. I hope to continue to hear such good accounts of your health and activity. Do not measure my interest in your letters by the number I myself write, though I mean to write oftener in future. No news here, scientific or other. Mr. Carey, you know, has gone back to England to live, and has married a young wife there, moreover.

TO W. J. HOOKER.

Cambridge, March 28, 1854.

I send a glass bottle filled with the pulp and seed of Cereus giganteus as gathered by the natives, and used for food, the same as what I formerly sent you a small quantity of in a letter, trusting the seeds would grow, as they are not subjected to heat in making this jam.

I have some pieces of the wood of the great Wellingtonia tree, which I estimate to be not older probably than the Christian era. Torrey has no fruit, nor have I; but there are some cones in Philadelphia. The wood is very like that of the red-wood, i. e., Taxodium sempervirens. I hope we shall get the male flowers, but I have no correspondent in California, and Torrey no very good or energetic ones.

How hard it is to believe that there is a European war! I trust it will be short. Some of our own people are behaving very badly about Cuba, but it is mostly talk for effect, and will lead to nothing, we hope.

TO GEORGE THURBER.

Cambridge, 20th April, 1854.

Dear Thurber,—When yours of the 17th arrived, and till now, I have been too much absorbed in college duties to consider it, as I now rapidly will.

Ranunculus 441. I never liked naming a plant after a person who has had nothing to do with it, as collector, describer, and nothing else; therefore do not like R. Huntiana. We will wait for some other mode of complimenting Mr. Hunt. Moreover, I have hit on a name which pleases me tolerably, viz., R. hydrocharoides, which, by your leave, we will adopt.

Thurberia specific name? That is a question to consider, and no very pat name at once applicable both to the species and the discoverer occurs to me.

“Thurberia palmata” might pass, and would anglicize into “the handy Thurber,” but then the hand has only three fingers.

“T. tridactyla” would meet this; but only birds are tridactylous; besides, the uppermost leaves are entire.

Taking another tack, from its smoothness, we might say, T. glabra or T. lævis; or, as I believe you have not a strong beard, T. imberbis. But, on the whole, perhaps it would be as well to indicate merely the nearest affinity of the genus, and call it “Thurberia thespesioides,” as it is nearest Thespesia. Take your choice, though, of any of the above, to which add “T. rosea,” if the color of the flower warrants that name.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

Cambridge, June 1, 1854.

My dear Friend,—It was with great pleasure that I received from you, two days ago, your letter of the 2d May. I counted myself your debtor, although, indeed, my last letter of 18th October is of later date than yours of the 1st October, which it crossed on the ocean, and I was only waiting until I could announce a small envoi to you, namely, that of a copy of the 1st volume of the “Botany of the United States Exploring Expedition in the South Seas,” which has been more than a year in printing. This 4th volume (777 pages) is at length happily printed off, and just in time, too, for sending you a copy (unbound, direct from the printing-office at Philadelphia) in the annual envoi of the Smithsonian Institution.

The atlas, of 100 plates in folio, which should accompany this volume, is by no means ready, owing to the slowness as well as the feeble health of the artist, Mr. Sprague; perhaps, even, it may not reach you before next year, by the same mode of conveyance.

I have now, indeed, some hopes that the “Flora of North America” may soon be carried through the Gamopetalæ, I elaborating at the same time, in a general memoir, the Gamopetalæ of Wright’s, Fendler’s, and Lindheimer’s collections in continuation; a pretty formidable matter!

In a separate small parcel you will find (in the Smithsonian envoi) some brochures for you.... Among them is a short article in “Silliman’s Journal,” accompanying a reprint of a great part of Dr. Hooker’s Introductory Essay to the “Flora of New Zealand.” Agassiz here is committed to the view opposite to Hooker’s, in an equally extreme form. I wished to interpose some criticisms to both views, but had only time to touch briefly on one or two points. I wait with impatience for your work on “Géographie Botanique,” expecting very much from it, from your great ability, long study of the subject, and fairness of mind. Indeed, I was daily expecting to learn that it was published; and now you tell me that the printing is barely begun; the “Prodromus,” volume 14, not yet begun! But I am one of the last persons who ought to complain of delay in execution....

From the family of the late M. de Jussieu, you should receive a copy of the “Epistolæ Linnæano-Jussieuanæ,” with our late friend’s notes, etc., the last scientific work of his too short life. I intended to send you a copy myself, but at the request of M. Ramond I surrendered the small extra edition to his charge for distribution. In due time you will have a copy in the volume of the “Memoirs of the American Academy” also. My daguerreotype of M. Jussieu was most opportunely taken. His family, having no recent portrait, have solicited the loan of it, to aid in the preparation of an engraved likeness; and I have placed it in their hands.

I delayed the last sheet of the “Correspondence” long, awaiting an answer to my request for some materials (notices, éloges, etc.), from which I could prepare something of a biographical nature to append, but I received nothing, at least until too late. In the May number of the “Kew Journal of Botany,” Hooker has reprinted my brief note; but by some accident, the marks of quotation are omitted from the two last paragraphs, which appear as if written by the editor of the “Journal.” ...

Believe me to remain, my dear friend and honored colleague, as ever, your sincerely attached,

Asa Gray.

TO W. J. HOOKER.

Cambridge, February 5, 1855.

My dear Sir William,—The inclosed, from our good friend Dr. Short, and the box it advises, came while I was at Washington, from which I have just returned. Mrs. Gray and I have enjoyed our month’s holiday very much; though I was kept busy enough, having to deliver nine lectures in three weeks. We had arranged to have a few days at New York, in which I could work with Dr. Torrey; but the good man was called off to Washington on business just as I left that place, and we crossed en route, and I came on home, in consequence....

I am very glad Mr. Smith was pleased with the live plants I sent. Please remind him that I should like to share in the distribution of seeds this spring. And if I find time to make out a short list, I may ask for some live plants again....

I have a Cereus giganteus six inches high, and I saw several others. They have no hair, and appear very unlike C. senilis....

There is an authentic account in some numbers of “Silliman’s Journal” last year of the size of that prostrate trunk (Wellingtonia-Washingtonia).

Mr. Blake, at Washington, told me something of it, but I forget the numbers. I will ask him, as he is a reliable person. But 450 feet is rather too tall.

So they would talk about the tree that was felled being 3,000 years old (and took in Lindley), whereas it was not quite 1,300! It appears to grow much faster than S. sempervirens. ...

A great loss in Forbes’s death. I have been trembling lest I should hear that Dr. Hooker is chosen to the chair at Edinburgh, which would give him very good pay, I suppose, and he would fill the place well, but it would take him away from special botany, which would be a great pity....

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

May 29, 1855.

The class which leaves college this summer have bespoken photographic likenesses, on paper, of their professors,—my colleagues and myself,—and this gives me an opportunity of obtaining from the artist some duplicate copies of that for which I sat, and which Mrs. Gray pronounces a very good likeness.

It is not so much vanity that induces me to ask you to accept of the copy I inclose, as the hope of getting yours in return, if that same style be adopted in Geneva, and be as little expensive as here,—to add to the already considerable number of portraits of botanists which make the chief adornment of my rooms,—among which the fine engraving of your distinguished father is conspicuous. I need not say that I should be glad to place the likeness of the son near to that of the father. Ever, my dear De Candolle,

Your sincere and faithful,
Asa Gray.

TO CHARLES WRIGHT.

August 28, 1855.

For a long while now I have been waiting for a good evening when I was not too tired to write you a long letter to meet you in California, in return, though a poor return, for your several nice letters from China.

It is now time my letter was off,—when lo and behold!—

Yesterday morning I was sitting here busy with steady work and not expecting much interruption; now, this evening, my passage is taken, my trunk packed, I am hurriedly closing up affairs, and to-morrow morning go on board steamer America and sail for Liverpool. I have to go and look after my brother-in-law, who is sick in Paris of a fever. No one of the family can go but me, and I manage to find the time. Mr. Loring pays the traveling charges, and off I go, to be gone, however, not over two months, perhaps not so long; a week in Paris, another at Kew, a few days more in England; this must repay me (besides the consciousness of having done my duty) for some twenty odd days of discomfort at sea!

What have I been doing of late? Not much accomplished, i. e., published. Of my “Plantæ Novæ Thurberianæ” and “Notes on Vavæa and Rhytidandra” I have sent you copies already, but I will send you more.

A useful article on the Smithsonian Institution, in July number of “Silliman,” probably you have seen in the “Journal;” never mind, I send you a separate copy by mail. Some critical notices which I have no copies of.

What I am about doing, I can always talk largely of. I am preparing a new edition of the “Manual of Botany of the Northern United States,” and a new elementary work of a familiar character, to go with it, separate and with original pictures on wood by Sprague, and I am to finish the “Flora” volume and “Plantæ Wrightianæ” with it. I have determined Berlandier’s plants up to end of Compositæ. Also I have done, along with Torrey, the botany of several expeditions across the continent for railroad surveys, which are soon to be published. Work goes slowly and I grow old. This little holiday will not be a bad thing for me, though it puts me back a little.

TO W. J. HOOKER.

Cambridge, October 23, 1855.

Now that I am quietly settled at home again, my episode seems almost like a dream,—a very pleasant one, however, since it gave me the pleasure of seeing once more some most valued and near friends. I was absent only six weeks and one day, of which twenty-two days were passed upon the water.

I found all well here on my return, but I was deeply grieved to learn the news of our beloved friend Dr. Torrey’s bereavement. It was about a month ago that the companion of his life, almost from his youth, was removed to a better world, after an illness of only a few days.... She was one of the most actively good, self-denying persons I ever knew. There are many to mourn at her departure out of her own family, especially among the poor and the distressed.... She was one of my earliest and best friends, one to whom I owe more than to almost any person; and I feel the loss as I should that of a near and dear relative.

I wrote you a line, with some inclosures, while at sea, and posted it at Halifax, N. S....

When I send the package from Holton, I wish also to send you live seedlings of a palm from Sonora, Mexico, raised from seeds gathered by Thurber, and one or two other things.

I do not forget the large “cypress knees” I promised, which will be rather striking in your famous museum, and I look out for an opportunity to send by sailing vessel direct to London.

Remember me affectionately to Lady Hooker (for whom Mrs. Gray incloses a few lines) and most cordially to Mr. Bentham, who so kindly came down from the country to give me the opportunity of seeing him, for which I am greatly obliged.

P. S.—I forgot to tell you that, by the hands of Hon. Miss Murray (who returns to England by this week’s steamer), I send you the September number of “Silliman’s Journal.” Should she forget to send it to you, please remind her when she comes to Kew, as assuredly she will, to talk about her Florida new fern. I have filled up the Ward case which she brought over, also a box of American plants which she takes, I suppose, for Mr. Fox Strangways. Her various boxes and packages will nearly fill the ship, I should think.

Miss Murray is a most lively, most active person, has traveled widely through the country, and traversed rough places, such as no other woman past sixty ever did. She has seen a great deal, but heard very little, I should think, as she talks incessantly, and in a lively, interesting way, too.

You will not be disappointed by the suppression of her manuscript by her English friends, I suppose, for she is fully determined to rush into print, to print her journal just as it was written from day to day; for she now feels she has a mission to rescue the South from the obloquy and wrong heaped upon it by us of the North, and by England. Save the mark!

At any rate, her journal will be piquant.

I am anxious to know how far we can economically use the post for the transmission of printed matter. Perhaps I could safely send you “Silliman’s Journal” in this way. As an experiment I now send you our University catalogue. No, it will not do, I see, for anything weighing over two ounces or three. Beyond this the rates increase woefully....

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

18th October, 1855.

Yours of August 30th (answered by my wife) was written when I was one day at sea. Yours of October 13, which arrived to-day, was written two days after I reached home again. I had two very pleasant voyages, on the whole, and not long, ten and a half and eleven and a half days; eleven days in Paris (where I was detained a little by a severe cold on my lungs) and a week in England, mostly at London and Kew. I found my brother-in-law so convalescent that I might have stayed at home, and I brought him home with me in good condition. We had hoped, till the last moment, to get places in the steamer of the 13th October, and to have had a fortnight more in England. But all the places had been engaged for months, and nobody was giving up berths up to the time we sailed; so we had to come in steamer of the 29th ult., where we got a good stateroom by great luck, though the vessel was greatly crowded. Dr. Joseph D. Hooker (whom I had wanted to see for some time) being away in Germany, and time being extremely valuable to me here, I was on the whole very glad to get home. The naturalists at Paris were en vacance, and mostly away. I saw only Brongniart, Spach, Gay, Dr. Montagne, and Trécul (who sent, I believe, some pamphlets for you; the package is not yet unpacked), and my good friend Vilmorin. Boissier was there from Geneva.

In England I spent all the little time I could command at dear Hooker’s at Kew; and Bentham, then in the country, came down to see me. I made a long and interesting call on Robert Brown, who is very old, but full of interest. I shall not again see this Nestor of botanists, as well as facile princeps, in this world.

Hooker was much delighted when I told him you were coming next spring to see him at Kew. He insisted upon taking me over to see the Cactus house, and all through it, so that I might tell you what a mass of Cacteæ there are there; and he will be much pleased to have you work among them. He spoke about his Cuscuteæ, but was not at all displeased at your retaining them; begged you would work them up if possible before returning them. You will be charmed with Sir William when you see him.

As to the “Manual,” my plan, as at present advised, is to cross the line of slavery a little, to take in Kentucky and Virginia; this makes the real division, in botanical geography, between North and South. It should be Northern ground, too, down to this line: for north of it slave labor is good for nothing; and there would be no slaves there, except for the Southern market. I cannot take in Missouri, for I must make the Mississippi my boundary. But all your St. Louis plants cross into Illinois, do they not? Tell me how this is. I shall get at work at the new edition soon. I shall first press on the “Lessons” a little further.

About Fouquiera; I have examined it here repeatedly on the live plant, which every year prolongs its main axis an inch or two. And I took leaves to Providence to show there, especially to remove any lingering doubt on Torrey’s mind. For Torrey would long have it that the spine was a primary leaf, and that an axillary leaf adhered to it by its petiole. He now knows better.

I just saw Agassiz. He looks well and strong....

I read Alphonse De Candolle’s “Géographie Botanique Raisonnée” on the voyage home: a most able work it is, full of interesting matter very methodically arranged. Hooker and Thomson’s “Flora Indica,” vol. i., is famous for its able introductory essay, etc.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

October 27, 1855.

Your welcome letter of the 7th of August duly reached me. I meant to have surprised you by an answer dated at Paris; but the eleven days I passed there were too busily occupied to allow it. M. Boissier will have told you of my sudden voyage, and the cause of it. I was absent from home only six weeks and a day; and twenty-two days of the forty-three were passed on the water. On returning home I found here:

1. The excellent lithographed portrait of yourself, a pleasing and pretty good likeness. Of the three copies I have offered one to Torrey, the other to Short.

2. The copy of “Géographie Botanique,” which you so kindly addressed to me. (I have already learned that Agassiz and Darlington have theirs; but Torrey not his, and I have directed inquiries to be made.) This was not my first introduction to the book; for I bought a copy of Masson in Paris, to read on the voyage, when I could have more leisure than at home. And I carefully read it then (after having dispatched Hooker and Thomson’s “Flora Indica”) up as far as to p. 1087, when I was obliged by the close of the voyage to break off, at a very interesting point; and I cannot yet resume the reading.

I cannot sufficiently express my profound admiration of this book, so thorough and conscientious, so capital in its method, and embodying such a vast amount of facts well discussed; it might well be the work of a long life. I have marked in many places points on which I may have a word to say, sometimes little details to add or correct, sometimes a criticism to hazard.

If time (which is now precious to me) permit, I will write a series of articles on it for “Silliman’s Journal,” which will serve to make the work generally known to our people, and in which I can insert any commentaries I have time and room for. One article I will devote to plants introduced into this country from Europe. Now that you have so well collected and digested the principal information, it will be easy to complete and correct some points; and this may be useful to you hereafter, as well as to me....

I will procure from Dr. Harris any information he has collected about the potato, which, if Raleigh took it from Virginia to England, must have been brought to Virginia from South America. It was certainly unknown to our aborigines, who, however, along with maize, cultivated beans (Phaseoli) and squashes (Cucurbitæ).

Dr. Hooker had written to me, eulogizing your work in the highest terms. I missed seeing him when in England.

Agassiz speaks most highly of it; but I think he has only looked rapidly through its pages as yet....

I am at this moment preparing to begin the printing of the 2d edition of my “Manual of the Botany of the Northern States.” ...

In consequence of your book, I shall take pains to classify the introduced plants, according to the degree of naturalization, etc.

Many thanks for sending me your portrait. I am already quite rich in the likenesses of botanists, many of which adorn the walls of my apartments....

Believe me to remain, my dear friend, yours very faithfully and truly,

Asa Gray.

TO W. J. HOOKER.

Cambridge, February 25, 1856.

My dear Sir William,—Holton is bringing out a book upon New Granada which will be interesting....

The cypress knee sent was the best and handsomest I had, though not the largest. I am glad it pleases you. But you mistook what I said, or meant to say, which was, that tucked away in the hollow you would find placed a specimen of a forming knee, not much bigger than your knuckle, on a piece of root a foot or so long. Was this overlooked or lost? Please tell me; for I can replace it with another, and physiologically it would be well to show the formation in its various stages....

I want to send you a book by a young friend of ours, Olmsted, on the seaboard slave States, an admirable volume, full of information, and lively withal. I wait for an opportunity. Lady Hooker will be interested in it. Our united warm regards to her.

Thanks to the Duke for anything to facilitate transmission of printed matter. But it is still high; for example, your “Journal,” which I get by post, costs 6d. each number, paid in London, and about 1d. more paid here. There is still room for improvement. I dare not send you “Silliman’s Journal” yet by post.

June 30, 1856.

Charles Wright, who was in the North Pacific Expedition under Ringgold and Rogers, has left his ship at California instead of making the voyage round Cape Horn, and crossed over the Nicaragua route, intending to botanize there some months. Finding himself there among our vile filibustering people, and all in confusion, however, he was soon obliged to come on home. He is awaiting the arrival of his ship, and will not till this autumn be able to touch his Pacific collections, of which the best and principal were made in Hongkong, Bonin, and the Loo Choo Islands and Japan. That they are not larger is not his fault.

Wright has a perfect passion for collecting plants; and already begins to plan other explorations. To satisfy his cravings for a while, I have proposed to him to go to St. Iago de Cuba, and explore that end of the island. What do you think of it? Has any botanist collected there? Would it be too like Jamaica to offer much novelty? But to return. In Nicaragua, Wright collected a goodly quantity of seeds, one set of which he wishes me to send to you; a present to Kew Gardens, as I understand it....

By the way, it was most lucky that I hurried up and had sent on to you the copy of Brackenridge’s “Filices;” for a fire in Philadelphia has consumed all of the poor fellow’s edition of the volume except ten copies which had been sold mostly in Europe. A sad and a heavy loss to B., who had no insurance, and something to me who had advanced to him the paper for printing it on, which now the poor fellow is in no condition to pay for. I have not even a copy of the atlas myself, but I shall get one from the government plates, which are preserved. Brackenridge utterly despairs of reprinting it. But possibly the government will set up the type for him again, as they have also lost a part of their small impression. Otherwise the book will have the value of excessive rarity, if it has no other....

May 25, 1857.

I hear with delight that you are meditating a trip to America, and I write forthwith to express my own and Mrs. Gray’s and my good father-in-law’s earnest hope that you will come over, even if it be for a few weeks only. The rest of the voyage cannot but be useful to so busy a person as you constantly are, and a run through the country, and a sight of the Yankee world, would interest you. At the Montreal scientific meeting you would see several old friends and many new ones. Torrey, Greene, Darlington, James, etc., would be half frantic with pleasure at the thought of seeing you; so it will not do to hint at such a thing, until you give me authority; and as for my wife and me, we will look after you like dutiful children, will go with you to Niagara, or to Lake Superior, if you will go so far, for there is nothing would give us so much pleasure as a visit from you; and if you would bring Lady Hooker or Mrs. Evans, or both, with you, it would be charming. The voyage is nothing to speak of, traveling here is easy and rapid, although not so very comfortable, as in England, and a good deal of the country can be seen in a few weeks without much fatigue. Pray do come, and exceedingly gratify,

Your affectionate and faithful
A. Gray.

TO JAMES D. DANA.

December 13, 1856.

My dear Dana,—I duly received the sheets I asked for.

The right way to bring a series of pretty interesting general questions towards settlement is perhaps in hand (though I do not expect myself to bring anything important to bear on it), viz., for a number of totally independent naturalists, of widely different pursuits and antecedents, to environ it on all sides, work towards a common centre, but each to work perfectly independently. Such men as Darwin, Dr. Hooker, De Candolle, Agassiz, and myself,—most of them with no theory they are bound to support,—ought only to bring out some good results. And the less each one is influenced by the other’s mode of viewing things the better. For my part, in respect to the bearings of the distribution of plants, etc., I am determined to know no theory, but to see what the facts tend to show, when fairly treated.

On the subject of species, their nature, distribution, what system in natural history is, etc., certain inferences are slowly settling themselves in my mind, or taking shape; but on some of the most vexed questions I have as yet no opinion whatever, and no very strong bias, thanks, partly, to the fact that I can think of and investigate such matters only now and then, and in a very desultory way.

I cannot say that I believe in centres of radiation for groups of species. From Darwin’s questions to me I think I perceive some of the grounds on which he would maintain it. One is attended to on page 77 of the January number [of “Silliman’s Journal”], but I am not clear that they are not just as susceptible of other interpretation.

But as to a centre of radiation for each separate species, I must say I have a bias that way. You seem to have also, and you can best judge whether this, combined with geological considerations, would not involve centres of radiation for groups of species as well, to a certain extent. Would not the fact that the members of peculiar groups (in Vegetable Kingdom) are to a great extent localized favor that view?

I am glad to hear that your idea of the unity of the human species is confirmed more and more. The evidence seems to me most strongly to favor it. And you well discriminate the separate questions of unity of birthplace and unity of parentage....

As to the physical question, surely you do not suppose that, in a fresh race, the one or two necessary close intermarriages would sensibly deteriorate the stock. Look at domestic animals of peculiar races,—how long you can breed in and in without much abatement of health or vigor!

Did you ever consider the question of the cause of deterioration from interbreeding?

I think I have somewhere in the “Journal” stated my notion about it, or hinted at it. If not, I will, some day; for I have a pretty decided opinion about it: that hereditary transmission of individual peculiarities involves also, among them, the transmission of disease, or tendency to disease,—a constantly increasing heritage of liability as interbreeding goes on; in plants well exemplified by maladies affecting old cultivated varieties long propagated by division.

I should much enjoy a visit with you at New Haven, and so would my wife, no less. Hope we may some day....

Yours faithfully,
A. Gray.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

March 26, 1857.

Fendler is back again in the country of Venezuela, and making fine collections. He will complete the sets of his former distribution, but not send the same things over again. He has found many more Filices. Will you and M. Dunant continue?

On Wright’s return home he was troubled with rheumatism, and longed for a warm climate to pass the winter in. So I sent him to the east end of Cuba (where I wished the Huets to go). He is doing very well there.

Oregon is still in a disturbed and unsafe state. But I should inform you that a commission has been raised to run our northwestern boundary with the British government; and it will probably be commenced this year. The party would have a sufficient escort, and this would give the Huets a safe opportunity for botanizing across the continent in a high latitude, if they are so disposed. I know not any details, but I could learn them, if need be, and there would be no difficulty in procuring needful protection for the Huets, they finding their own subsistence.

I have published two statistical articles, based on my “Botany of the Northern States,” in “Silliman’s Journal,” and a third is now printing in that journal for May. I shall have extra copies to send you. There are other topics I mean to take up, if I can find time....

TO GEORGE BENTHAM.

May 4, 1857.

Since your letter came I have looked up and read the article in the “Edinburgh,” and like it much. Your few words about Genera, page 517, appear to comprise the gist of the whole matter. As to your fuller exposition, not being able to lay hands on the “Literary Gazette,” I wait to see your article in the “Journal of the Linnæan Society.”

I am particularly interested in what you write of your popular “British Flora,” and the English names; and I am going to ask you to explain to me more fully the principles on which you proceed. For, if practicable, I am going to have occasion to do something of the sort here. Pray illustrate your plan a little; as I see much difficulty in carrying it out, except in so small a flora as the British, where every plant has a popular name. One additional difficulty here is that our common English names are mostly misapplied ones, and the plants that have indigenous trivial names have too many of them, varying in different parts of the country.

How do you name the orders? What relation will you have between your specific names and your generic, and how many words will you allow each to consist of?

Give me your names through some family, say Ranunculaceæ. If I can see my way clear, I shall follow your lead, or cause it to be followed on an occasion which will soon be presented.

I wish I had known of Clitoria Mariana-acuminata, etc., in time to add it to my list in the last number of “Silliman’s Journal;” a copy of the article was sent to Dr. Hooker by post last week. I will send more, from my extras, presently.

I am quite prepared for what you say about interchange of species of United States and Europe taking place via Asia, instead of across the Atlantic; but you will see there are a few, besides aquatics (Subularia, Eriocaulon, etc.), which would seem to have taken the shorter cut.

As respects identical species, interchange is the only thing that, on our views of what a species is, will explain the occurrence of the same species here and there. But as to genera, I do not yet feel free to assume an interchange, or a former continuity of land, between two widely separated regions on account of their having identical genera or closely related species. I see no reason why cognate species may not have been originally given to most widely separated stations; and, as to the facts of association, can we say more than this, that the species of a genus are apt to be confined to one part of the world? Are there not too many cases to the contrary to warrant our suspecting former continuity of two remote districts on account of common genera? Peculiar genera, such as Torreya, Illicium, Philadelphus, Astilbe, etc., divided between Japan and the United States of America, indicate some peculiar relation, and are most noteworthy, but I do not see why it points to connection.

I am very glad you are turning your good, logical mind and immense knowledge to this class of topics; but do not let it run off with too much of your valuable time. I take far more satisfaction in discussing questions of botanical affinity; and long to get back to that sort of work. Just now, I must needs be absorbed in elementary work and teaching, but look to see an end of this.

I have been watching the development of the ovules of Magnolia; nothing can be more normal than they are, in the early stages.

When Wright comes home from Cuba I expect to get hold of his considerable north Japan collection, which I expect to find very interesting on questions of distribution, the very questions you ask me to consider.

I doubt if our “mountain backbone” actually stops any species, itself, from advancing east or west.

I wish you would compare our White Birch with the European B. alba, and let me know the result. Also the Chestnuts....

TO R. W. CHURCH.

Cambridge, May 15, 1857.

An acquaintance en route for Scotland has offered to take some small parcels for me.

Among them is one I have taken the liberty to address to you, a copy of a very elementary book I have prepared as an introduction to my favorite science, finding there was no one in use here which I thought fit to put into the hands of young beginners. Here botany is taught, somehow or other, in most schools, and generally by incompetent teachers from wretched books, i. e., those used in the ordinary schools and for young people.

I have endeavored, in the little book I send you, to make real science as easy and simple as possible. I doubt if I have yet aimed low enough; but the book seems to take, and promises to be useful.

Although not adapted for your meridian (where you have doubtless good elementary books enough), yet when your boy, who must now be five or six years old, if he has been spared to you, gets a few years older, I shall be much gratified if this little volume should interest him, and aid you somewhat in developing in his mind a love for the study of nature in one of its pleasantest branches....

I want to offer you my new “Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States,” not that it can be of any use or of much interest to you, but must not load my kind acquaintance with more parcels. I wait for an opportunity of sending through the booksellers, before long.

TO JAMES D. DANA.

November 7, 1857.

If you have plenty, please send me two more copies of your “Thoughts on Species.”

I first read it carefully, a week ago, and I meant to write you at once how I like it, and a few remarks, but something prevented at the time, and I have been very busy and preoccupied ever since.

For the reason that I like the general doctrine, and wish to see it established, so much the more I am bound to try all the steps of the reasoning, and the facts it rests on, impartially, and even to suggest all the adverse criticism I can think of. When I read the pamphlet I jotted down on the margin some notes of what struck me at the time. I will glance at them again, and see if, on reflection, they appear likely to be of the least use to you, and if so will send them, taking it for granted that you rather like to be criticised, as I am sure I do, when the object is the surer establishment of truth.

In your idea of species as specific amount or kind of concentrated force, you fall back upon the broadest and most fundamental views, and develop it, it seems to me, with great ability and cogency.

Taking the cue of species, if I may so say, from the inorganic, you develop the subject to great advantage for your view, and all you say must have great weight, in “reasoning from the general.”

But in reasoning from inorganic species to organic species, and in making it tell where you want it and for what you want it to tell, you must be sure that you are using the word “species” in the same sense in the two, that the one is really an equivalent of the other. That is what I am not yet convinced of. And so to me the argument comes only with the force of an analogy, whereas I suppose you want it to come as demonstration. Very likely you could convince me that there is no fallacy in reasoning from the one to the other to the extent you do. But all my experience makes me cautious and slow about building too much upon analogies; and until I see further and clearer, I must continue to think that there is an essential difference between kinds of animals or plants and kinds of matter. How far we may safely reason from the one to the other is the question. If we may do so even as far as you do, might not Agassiz (at least plausibly) say, that as the species Iron was created in a vast number of individuals over the whole earth, so the presumption is that any given species of plants or animals was originated in as many individuals as there are now, and over as wide an area, the human species under as great diversities as it now has (barring historical intermixture)?—so reducing the question between you to insignificance, because then the question whether men are of one or of several species would no longer be a question of fact, or of much consequence.

You can answer him from another starting-point, no doubt; but he may still insist that it is a legitimate carrying out of your own principle....

The tendency of my mind is opposed to this sort of view; but you may be sure that before long there must be one more resurrection of the development theory in a new form, obviating many of the arguments against it, and presenting a more respectable and more formidable appearance than it ever has before....

I wanted to say something on the last two pages, but as I have nothing in particular to except to, and much to approve, and as it is late bedtime, I spare you further comments.

I set out to find flaws, as likely to be more suggestive and therefore far more useful to you than any amount of praise, with which I could fill page after page.

TO W. J. HOOKER.

Cambridge, December 6, 1857.

Your first letter is now gone to Sullivant, because you speak of him so handsomely, and say that Mitten is instructed to prepare a set of Mosses for him. A noble fellow is Sullivant and deserves all you say of him and his works. The more you get to know of him the better you will like him.

Let me tell you about my “Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States.” It was quite impossible, of course, that the publishers should provide such illustrations as the fourteen plates and keep the book at a salable price, so Sullivant, on his own motion, had the eight plates of Musci engraved in copper, at his own cost, for $630 (about £126), and gave them to the work, after printing 250 copies for his separate booklet I sent you. I gave the six plates of Ferns, etc., cut on stone by Sprague to complete the plan. In the “Journal” you are wrong in supposing that the Musci were even drawn by Sprague. If in time please correct this when you notice his book. Sullivant drew them all with his own hands (as he did those of former memoirs which pleased you well), and had them copied and reduced to proper size by a German artist he employs. So that besides his labor, he has expended at least £180 in money, on these plates. They were executed on copper by a young engraver in Boston.

Your second letter, begun the day the other was dispatched, reached me a few days ago, while dear Torrey was here on a visit. He has just returned to New York. We called to see Greene, but he was not in....

TO GEORGE BENTHAM.

November 16, 1857.

I have noted with interest Naudin’s doings in Cucurbitacæ. It has induced me to look a little into the geographical question, and I begin really to think C. Pepo, and perhaps others, are American. Mr. Sophocles, our Greek tutor, who knows cultivated plants well, and everything about mediæval and ancient Greek, is quite clear that the ancients knew nothing of pumpkins and winter squashes, and is able to correct De Candolle’s lucubrations in one or two points. Our New England and Canadian aborigines had beans, too. Those and Cucurbita came north from a warmer climate with maize, I presume....

When I got your proof-sheet of the “British Flora” and your long letter of 28th May, there was something I wanted to talk about, I dare say, but there was no writing then, as you had gone abroad, and now the subject is all out of my head. But I have occasion to take up the subject of popular names of plants quite seriously in a week or two, and I may have something to remark.

I wish to follow your lead, but should be disposed to go rather farther than you do in adopting English names. For instance, I would certainly adopt Mousetail instead of Myosure. Myosure is hardly more English than before clipping its tail a little, and Mousetail is the exact equivalent. Corydal and Astragal I quite like, as they have really no English names. I incline to Crowfoot as a generic appellation. To extend it over the whole genus is only doing what is so often done with scientific generic names. In the case of genera having very strongly marked subgenera, would it not be possible to let the subgeneric name govern the popular nomenclature? as say—

Pear; genus=Pyrus, under it

Pear, with its species;

Apple, 1. Common Apple,

2. Crab-Apple, etc.

There are formidable difficulties about this popular nomenclature, yet they must be surmounted in some way or other.

As we are making much of English, why not say “rootstock” instead of “rhizome.” I do not like French forms. I would even say “pod” instead of “capsule,” in popular parlance.

Kindly send me proofs as you go on. I want much to see them.

Wright’s collections in North Pacific Expedition are here, and he is turning over his Behring Straits collection and trying to work it out, with some help from me. There is a Hongkong collection; there may be some of these he would like to ask you to name, so far as you may off hand. The Japan collection I will elaborate myself. There is not so much from the north as I expected. They had no chance to explore the small islands connecting with the Kurile Islands. I have only peeped into one or two parcels; but in one I saw two things which will interest you as much as they did me. Imagine the two most characteristic possible eastern United States plants, Caulophyllum and Diphylleia, both, I believe, our very species. Tell this to Dr. Hooker!

The only domestic news I have to tell you is, that on a hot August day our beloved Newfoundland dog was found dead,—really a sad loss. To console us my brother-in-law, a fortnight after, sent me a puppy of the same breed, an uneasy, frolicsome, awkward fellow yet, but promising to be intelligent and very handsome. We could not bear to give him the name of his lamented predecessor; so Mrs. Gray named him Hans,—a souvenir of Pontrilas....

Dr. Gray’s dogs and cats were always well-recognized members of the family. He had a great love of animals, which was warmly returned by his different pets. In his early married life the kittens he helped raise by feeding them with a dropping-tube from his microscope rather preferred him to their young and careless mother, and, confounding all other men with him, were perpetually scrambling into laps, to the surprise of callers. Two grew into fine cats, who demanded a regular attention and consideration from him, reminding him by gentle taps, one on each side, when bedtime came.

Of his first dog, he always said that they stood more in the relation of brothers than master and dog; and the dog felt a guardian care of him. The different characters of his two Newfoundland dogs, and of the smaller ones he had later, interested him, for they were singularly different, though both the Newfoundlands shared his affection for a pretty Maltese cat who had succeeded the other cats; they were especially fond of her kittens and attentive to them, allowing them all sorts of liberties. The cats and dogs always lived affectionately together. Dr. Gray always recognized their good consciences, which varied somewhat with the different type of animal, and considered that the size of different breeds had much to do with their characteristics. They always learned to eat what their master did; not so much, he would say, from any preference for oysters and dry toast, as that they were ambitious to do as far as possible what he did.

He was very skillful in the handling of animals, and they recognized it in allowing him to perform small surgical operations, to dress wounds, etc., with a touching trust and submission.

TO GEORGE BENTHAM.

March 9, 1858.

My dear Bentham,—Many thanks for yours of February 14. Although much pleased to hear from you, I cannot expect to hear often, unless you have something special to say. No one but Hooker can write long and frequent letters while he is doing such a vast amount of work, and keeping up such a fresh, and keen, and scrutinizing interest in such a great variety of subjects. I wonder how he does it. How well oiled the machinery of his brain must be to do it all without great wear and tear! If you or I had half these matters to think of at once, we should go distracted. Warn Hooker to take good care of himself and not break down in health. It is a facility which he inherits, that of turning from one thing to another without loss of time or of working power.

I shall be pleased to see the “Handbook” when it is out. Never mind what people say. I dare say the little book will do a great deal of good....

I am glad you will distribute more of Spruce’s plants. I want especially any of his Andes collections, for Baños was one of our Exploring Expedition stations. I am going to finish up our Exploring Expedition this year (D. V.), and have done with it. That and some other things done, and I dream of coming over to England, and working at nothing but “North American Flora,” de novo. I hope I may, and that I shall find you and Mrs. B. as fresh as ever, and enjoying yourselves to the full....

April 26.

My last book in elementary botany is now just off my hands, and will be out in a fortnight. I hope it will be of use. Forgive me for writing horn-books, and I am now done with that sort of work. There were several convincing reasons for doing it.

TO DANIEL CADY EATON.

February 23, 1858.

I dare say you may learn something here as to teaching, etc., if you can pick it up yourself, which, after all, is the only way anything worth knowing is obtained. But from now to the end of April I am just overwhelmed with work, and shall have no time to give any special instruction.

At the opening of the term I begin my drilling of Sophomores in the “Botanical Text-Book.” My lectures to a selection of Juniors, on Systematic Botany, I do not ordinarily commence till April 1, but this year I am able to begin early in March, though not much work is done till May. You might attend Agassiz’s lectures, but he will not be back from Florida as soon as the opening of the term.

Let me know how much instruction you have to give this year, and of what sort, and I can see whether I can help you much. I dare say you will teach very well.

There are certain little matters you might pick up about class illustration and manipulation without it costing you much time. We were just thinking of sending you Wright’s Hongkong ferns.

Suppose you come on, count as a pupil, or as a visitor, as you like, work away as you think best, making preparations for your course, in which I will help you all I can. And at the same time work up Wright’s Hongkong and Bonin and Japan ferns (bring any books you want which I have not). I want to drill you a little at systematic work, and think you will learn something that way. Come straight here. We shall want you to stay with us, if the house is empty. And if not we shall make no difficulty of sending you down to the Brattle House. But it would be so much more convenient here.

I am very desirous that you should be duly established at Yale, and have no doubt you will satisfy the college and fill the place with comfort and credit.

We will talk over matters at odd moments when you come.

I shall be most glad to help you as a friend and fellow-worker; but I cannot promise any special instruction, and shall take no fee. “Dog does not eat dog,” is the saying, you know.

Judge Lowell writes, in 1888, “I was in college when Dr. Gray was appointed to his professorship at Harvard, and ours was, I think, the first or one of the first classes to whom he lectured. I remember his lectures well, they were so full of knowledge and of enthusiasm and so calculated to impress the young mind.

“I suppose he had not lectured much of late years; and in his many other successes, his powers as a lecturer may have been overlooked by those who have written of him.”

Dr. Rothrock, in his address before the memorial meeting of the botanical section of the Academy at Philadelphia, speaks of Dr. Gray’s patient drilling of him in writing his thesis, making him go over and over it again, until it had been rewritten six times before he allowed him to be satisfied with it. His pupils would always remember his comment when satisfied,—“That is neatly stated.”

And Dr. Farlow shows the picturesque figure “hurrying down Garden Street (on lecture mornings) so covered by the mass of branches and flowers which were to illustrate the lecture that his head and body were hardly visible.”

“The few who gathered around the little table in Harvard Hall, in pursuit of knowledge which did not count in the college reckoning, will never forget the untiring patience with which he explained what then seemed difficult, the contagious enthusiasm with which he led them on from simple facts toward the higher fields of science, or the tender personal interest which he showed in their hopes and half-formed plans for the future; an interest which, on his part, only strengthened as years passed on, and makes them now mourn, not so much the death of a great botanist as the loss of a sympathizing friend.”

TO W. J. HOOKER.

April 30, 1858.

I must tell you that in humble imitation of Kew, I am going to establish a museum of vegetable products, etc., in our university.

The erection of a new building for the Museum of Comparative Anatomy and for the Mineralogical Cabinet liberates the very fine hall used for the Mineralogical Cabinet formerly. This I have applied for, and obtained for my purposes, and am taking into it the various things I have picked up from time to time. It is a room about forty-five feet long, with deep alcoves the whole length of each side, already shelved, and with glass doors to the cases, a window in each of the ten alcoves; the centre, or nave, serves for my lecture-room. So now I shall beg all my students and correspondents to send me every sort of vegetable thing; so if there is anything you need still from this country you should let me know; and whenever you are overrun with duplicate woods, etc., just think how welcome such things would be here, and how they may stimulate our collectors and travelers, who perchance may occasionally send me something that would fill some gap in the Kew museum.

Mr. Wright is having a good training here, and when he goes again to Cuba, or elsewhere, will do much better, both as to common botanical specimens and for collecting vegetable products and curiosities.

Dr. A. A. Gould, who will bring a line to you, is a physician in Boston, and one of our best zoölogists, especially in conchology, etc.; a most excellent man. He takes a well-deserved holiday for three months or so, mostly in a run over the Continent. He has London friends in plenty. He may like to see Kew Gardens before one o’clock, and would be pleased to pay his respects to you in person, if his time allows a flying visit to Kew before he proceeds to the Continent.

Just at this moment, and since my parcel of books for you left the house, the May number of “Silliman’s Journal” has come in. I will ask Dr. Gould to take it to you....

June 21.

About the museum. Ours is to be not economical (except in the sense that it must not cost anything to speak of) but for class illustration and botanical research. So I want woods, fruits, seeds, etc., and must keep all within narrow limits. All I could venture to ask from you is that whenever your keeper or Dr. Hooker should be throwing out duplicates to save room, you would have some such things boxed up for me. I should indeed like to go over to you, and select for myself, as you and Dr. Hooker suggest. Joseph suggests that I should be sent over by the university for the purpose! His whole idea is as magnificent as my plan is humble. I fear I must always travel and cross the ocean at my own charges. But the proposition suggests to me that, when I am ready to revisit England, this will be a good ground for asking leave of absence without cutting off my pay. But there is much to be done before I can leave home again, and when I shall be ready and able to do so, if it please Providence that I may be, I want two full years and most of it at Kew. How I hope it may be done in your day, and that I may receive your cordial greeting, and find you as hale and as actively useful as ever. But “l’homme propose,” etc. We are delighted to hear from Mrs. E. that you are well and strong again.

Boott kindly writes me of Brown by every mail; by the next arrival we must expect to hear that he is no more....

Wherever Wright goes, you may rely upon the fullest set of his gatherings, and we may expect they will be better than formerly. For (what I never thought he would have patience for) he has really taken to studying botany, which he never did before, and digs away at his dried specimens most perseveringly. At first it went against the grain, and he used to wish himself far off in the woods. But he has kept on for six or eight months, and now generally prefers to find out a plant by his own skill, rather than have me tell him what it is; so he will be able to collect more understandingly, and the year passed here will not be lost time.

Dr. Robert Brown died shortly after the date of this letter. In Dr. Gray’s memoir of him, he says:—

“Upon the death of Robert Brown, it was remarked that, next to Humboldt, his name adorned the list of a greater number of scientific societies than that of any other naturalist or philosopher. It was Humboldt himself who, many years ago, saluted Brown with the appellation, ‘Botanicorum facile princeps,’ and the universal consent of botanists recognized and confirmed the title.... Brown delighted to rise from a special case to high and wide generalizations; and was apt to draw most important and always irresistible conclusions from small selected data or particular points of structure. He had unequaled skill in finding decisive instances.... So all his discoveries and all his notes and observations are fertile far beyond the reader’s expectation. Perhaps no naturalist ever taught so much in writing so little.... Those who knew him as a man will bear unanimous testimony to the unvarying simplicity, truthfulness, and benevolence of his character, as well as to the singular uprightness of his judgment.”

TO R. W. CHURCH.

June 1, 1858.

Your gift of the “Oxford Essays” came to me, and was partly read with much interest before the arrival of your kind letter of the 31st March. Many thanks for both.

I know too little of French literature, early or late, but I admire your article for its neat and delicate delineation and discrimination of character. I read with interest, not unmingled with concern, Baden Powell’s and Wilson’s articles. The latter person I heard preach one of the Bampton lectures at Oxford, 1851. Into what will the latitudinarian school, if I may so call it, develop at Oxford?

Gladstone’s article I have not had time to read yet, nor his large work, which probably will reach us presently, through our book club,—I hope at a time when I have more leisure than now.

Last week the publishers, at my request, sent to Trübner & Company, American booksellers (12 or 20) Paternoster Row, a copy of a new and more elementary book of mine than the one you are pleased to compliment. I intended that as a kind of horn-book, which Dr. Hooker insists it is not; and as something more simple was wanted here, to lead the way both to the “Lessons” and especially to the “Manual,” which is rather strong for beginners, I have tried again, and you will see the result. I should have made the little “Popular Flora” fuller if the publishers had allowed more room.

Having last year reëdited my “Botanical Textbook” (of which, to complete your set, a copy is also sent to you, through Trübner), I have now done my part in elementary botanical writing, and I return with zest to my drier investigations, in which I have much to do.

If I ever find time I am greatly disposed to write some day upon the principles of classification,—the ground in nature for classification, the nature and distribution and probable origin of species,—knotty points, upon which I incline to differ decidedly from Agassiz, and considerably from the common notions.

Some of the more immediate and best-established deductions I hope to bring out in a paper I shall soon be occupied with, containing the results of a comparison of the flora of Japan (in which I have new materials) with our own of the United States of America.

My college work keeps me very busy at this season.

... I see no near prospect of revisiting the Old World. The commercial troubles last autumn have reduced our moderate means and prospects a little. But if I live I must yet have two years’ work in England and on the Continent. With great regard, I remain,

Yours very faithfully,
Asa Gray.

TO JOHN TORREY.

July 27, 1858.

I have to-day received a nice present from Vilmorin of Paris, i. e., the copy of Robert Brown’s “Prodromus,” presented by him to A. L. de Jussieu.

... I am kept here, too, by the attending suddenly to building a new conservatory, for which a donation of $2,000 has been received. I cannot leave till it is well under way.

I am deep in Japan botany; interesting results.

September 24.

At length we are home again, arriving night before last, very direct from Quebec, where we had (as everywhere else upon our whole route—Litchfield, New York, Palisades, Fairfield, Sauquoit, Montreal, etc.) a delightful time. J. much stronger, except for a cold caught in Quebec, which still lingers.

Colonel Munro was very kind; is a jolly good fellow, as the English say.

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

October 14, 1858.

By this time you are in your house, I hope, and all comfortable, and ready soon to set to work.

I rejoice to hear that Mr. Shaw keeps up his zeal, and will make a creditable establishment. I wish him all prosperity. If he will make and keep up a general herbarium it will save you much time and money....

October 30.

I have yours of the 24th. Tatnall is an old friend of Dr. Darlington, new to me, but writing to me of late. I know not his age, profession, character, etc., etc. But he appears to know the plants around him very well....

Hope you are getting settled down and comfortable.

I met Agassiz at the Club. He is cordial and pleasant. He had not heard of your return, which I wondered at....

Fendler is with you, at least in St. Louis. Short is ready to advance something if he will fall to collecting again wherever you say. Get him some appointment with the army at Utah. That is the place. What is the good of your both being Democrats if you cannot get something for it!!

December 3.

Darwin asks me to find out if you medical men have ascertained or noticed any difference in liability to take fevers of warm climates, say yellow fever, between light-complexioned and dark-complexioned people of the Caucasian race. If you know personally anything about it, or where anything is published bearing on the point, kindly let me know, and oblige

Your old friend,
Asa Gray.

TO GEORGE BENTHAM.

December 13, 1858.

Boott writes in glowing terms of your paper on British flora and distribution lately read; and I hope soon to read it in the “Linnæan Journal.”

That the interchange of temperate species between North America and Europe has taken place via Asia is now a patent fact; and now the whole subject, and the probable explanation, begins to be clear to see.

December 31.

A happy New Year to you and Mrs. Bentham, and many thanks for your letter promising me your paper on Hongkong plants to print here. Pray give me passim any notes that occur to you upon Loo Choo plants, etc. I shall now soon be done with my Japan studies, and shall print a paper bringing to view curious facts of distribution, etc., and lay out a set for the Kew herbarium. How true it is, as you intimated, that the interchange in northern hemisphere has mainly been via Asia.

I heartily admire your “Handbook,” and await with great interest your paper growing out of it; your experience is so great and your judgment so sound. As to English nomenclature, we can only approximate to a good system; the practical difficulties are too great, often insurmountable. It seems to me you hit the happy medium, if we must needs have popular name of the genus coëxtensive with the Latin one; but I rather doubt the advisability of that, and would use sub-generic popular names for generic, I think. Though “I do not much like” the whole thing, yet somebody must attend to English nomenclature, for better or worse; so I am glad you took it up.

I hope you will study perigynous and epigynous. As to ovary, which, putting the important part for the whole, we have learned to use in place of pistil, it certainly is perfectly novel to me to hear the name applied to the gynæcium of Ranunculus. I am confident the word is never so used in De Candolle or Endlicher. I do not recall any instance of your using the word in any such sense; I am sure I never did. Where the fact of the combination is doubtful or ambiguous, if I said ovary, that would infer the combination; if ovaries, the distinctness. In Apocynaceæ A. De Candolle steadily writes ovarium or ovaria, according to the nature of the case. Per contra, you might as well call the column of Malva a stamen! For the collective term, I wish, in your paper, you would go for restoring to use the Linnæan term pistillum, and against the habit of using ovarium in a double sense, that is, sometimes for whole female organ, sometimes for its ovule-bearing portion. Pray do not add a third; and so when you speak of ovary in Clematis leave us to gather, from the context, whether you mean, (1) the whole gynæcium; (2) a separate pistil; or, (3) the ovuliferous portion of a pistil.

Hooker calls my judgment about root and radicle “a flippant snub”! I beg a thousand pardons, and had no intention to be flippant or dogmatical, but simply to record a fact. For mistake, pray read take. My thanks for his letter of December 8th; will write him soon.

February 2, 1859.

I wish I had now your paper on geographical distribution, while I am working up the relations of the Japan flora in this respect. Where is Agardh’s paper published, and what does it amount to?...

I cannot answer Dr. Hooker’s exceedingly interesting letter about theoretical ancient distribution of plants this week. Tell him I shall have some evidence which will come well into his views as to north temperate zone.

TO W. J. HOOKER.

January 24, 1859.

I hope soon to hear that Government will acquire your herbarium, and make bountiful provision for its increase and maintenance. After all Brown’s genius, you have done more for botany than a dozen Browns, and made a hundredfold more sacrifices and efforts. To you, and to your son, England and the botanical world owe the greatest debt of gratitude,—a debt which I hope will continue to accumulate a long time yet....

TO JOHN TORREY.

January 7, 1859.

My dear Friend,—I will send your bundles presently, after Tuesday next, till when I must work like a dog, to get through the Japan collection, and read a paper on Tuesday at a social meeting of the Academy at Mr. Loring’s house that evening (January 11th). Now come on (if by day train), stop there, 8 Ashburton Place, where I will be.

I am going to hold forth for nearly an hour, upon Japan botany in its relation to ours and the rest of the northern temperate zone, and knock out the underpinning of Agassiz’s theories about species and their origin; show, from the very facts that stumbled De Candolle, the high probability of single and local creation of species, turning some of Agassiz’s own guns against him.

I introduced it here at Club, last month, and Agassiz took it very well, indeed....

I asked Thurber the name of a couple of Grasses. Let the Grass-man speak; now that he is turned out to grass, let him attend to his grazing.

February 19.

Andersson writes me that I am chosen one of the six botanists on the foreign list of Stockholm Academy, to fill the vacancy caused by Robert Brown’s death.

Friday evening, [April].

I have your two favors of 12th and 15th. I am very grateful for the nice care you take of my wife. You seem to have her under very thorough control.

Cure her up fast as you can, and please return her per railway on the 3d of May; for the 4th being the eleventh anniversary of our union, we must not be separated then—“The Union, it must be preserved.” ...

I send back your Cavendish with many thanks.

The old cock was much like Robert Brown in many respects. Though there is nothing in him to love, he calls out a sort of admiration, partly in the literal sense, that is, wonder, mixed with pity, that he had no feelings. Brown had, and besides he was social and not so very queer, but he lived very much in the same way, and I suppose had as little sense of religion.

Schreber spells Anthephora, but gives no derivation. P. de B., you see, does, so Anthephora is doubtless right.

Can that and Buffalo-grass be the same? I doubt. Has the Anthephora-like plant no stamens of its own?

The mode of growth does not so much distinguish your plant from Newberry’s Hemitones, and verily I suspect they are the same species. Pity you come in and spoil a good name!...

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

April 27, 1859.

I am charmed at the intelligence you give of your son, and that he takes to botany with spirit, so that he may continue the celebrity of the honored name of De Candolle in the third generation.

We shall welcome him when he comes to America and will do all we can to advance his objects. Oregon and the country to the north of it (British Columbia) will be in good and safe condition to explore, and I am convinced that there is still much to find in the Sandwich Islands, especially in the interior of Hawaii, where there is said to be a broad, almost untrodden, wooded region, between the principal mountain-masses, and occupying a good part of the interior of the island. But it will take time, patience, and considerable means to explore this region; provisions must be carried in for a long way, and many natives employed in feeding the exploring party. Next, the Kurile Islands, and all the northern part of Japan, Yesso, and the islands northeast of it offer the greatest interest; Manchuria also, but the Russians will look after that; Korea could perhaps be explored, so that the expedition you have suggested strikes my fancy as the best that could be, and would take your son through regions full of interest, safe to explore, and healthy. Certainly I can suggest nothing better.

Pray give my best regards to M. Boissier and to other friends in Geneva. I trust you will have safety and tranquillity in Switzerland. But it appears as if you would have war all around you,—a very sad state of things. Our latest intelligence looks very warlike, I am sorry to see. With all my heart I join in the supplication, “Give peace in our time, O Lord.” From such a war as is threatened no good can spring, in any result....

Ever and very cordially yours,

Asa Gray.

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

May 18, 1859.

Well, even $10,000 a year is much better than nothing for the botanical establishment. I wish we had half of that....

If Shaw will be liberal in his establishment, why not turn over to him your general herbarium? If I had one I could have free access to always, I would not take the expense and trouble of keeping up and increasing one myself....

So, you have made the capital discovery, and proved the so-called Anthephora to be the female of Buffalo-grass. I would not have believed it without direct evidence.

I cannot study it; it would take me a long while to get the case so before me that my opinion about the affinities of the grass would be of any use; but it is most interesting, and I beg you to work it out in detail and thoroughly....

June 6.

As to your own herbarium, I think you are right for the present. Keep you own; arrange it on paper of the size of Shaw’s. But look to an eventual combination, either in Shaw’s lifetime or soon after, and be open to propositions from Shaw; as, for example, to take your whole herbarium, provide for maintenance and increase, and when ready, to make you director of the whole concern. This duty must devolve upon you, and when it does, with a decent salary, you could reside up there, throw physic to the dogs, or only take a share in consultations, and have time to do yourself justice in botany.

Meanwhile, if Shaw would take your herbarium upon proper terms, you might at any time have any particular families of plants with you, in your house, to work at....

Mr. Shaw has lately written. I inclose his letter to you. I have just replied to it, expressing a lively interest in his projected establishment, and offering my best services if he requires them in the way of advice or suggestion. I hope it will be all right in the end....