Chapter VI. Letters to Darwin and Others. 1860-1868

As before stated, Dr. Gray’s letters to Dr. Darwin previous to 1862 have been destroyed, save the one dated January 23, 1860, which was published in Darwin’s “Life and Letters,” and is here reproduced for the convenience of the reader, as well as Dr. Gray’s letter of January 5, 1860, to Dr. Joseph D. Hooker, also published in Darwin’s “Life and Letters.” The original letters to Darwin later than 1862 have been more or less injured, apparently by the ravages of mice, so that in copying them it has sometimes been necessary to supply missing words. Where these are not obvious, the supposed words are enclosed in brackets.

The letters in this chapter also include the period of the civil war; into which, as they show, Dr. Gray threw himself with all his earnestness. He helped as far as he was able in every way. A company of the men who were too old or otherwise incapacitated from going to the front was enlisted in Cambridge to guard the State Arsenal there, and also to be ready to be summoned in any emergency; and he joined the ranks and was faithful in the drilling and every duty to which they were called. It is hard to realize, in these days, how all the community worked together in all possible ways; it was the business of life.

TO J. D. HOOKER.

Cambridge, January 5, 1860.

My dear Hooker,—Your last letter, which reached me just before Christmas, has got mislaid during the upturnings in my study which take place at that season, and has not yet been discovered. I should be very sorry to lose it, for there were in it some botanical mems. which I had not secured....

The principal part of your letter was high laudation of Darwin’s book.

Well, the book has reached me, and I finished its careful perusal four days ago; and I freely say that your laudation is not out of place.

It is done in a masterly manner. It might well have taken twenty years to produce it. It is crammed full of most interesting matter, thoroughly digested, well expressed, close, cogent; and taken as a system it makes out a better case than I had supposed possible....

I will write to Darwin when I get a chance. As I have promised, he and you shall have fair play here.... I must myself write a review of Darwin’s book for “Silliman’s Journal” (the more so that I suspect Agassiz means to come out upon it) for the next (March) number, and I am now setting about it when I ought to be every moment working the Exploring Expedition Compositæ, which I know far more about. And really it is no easy job, as you may well imagine.

I doubt if I shall please you altogether. I know I shall not please Agassiz at all. I hear another reprint is in the press, and the book will excite much attention here, and some controversy....

TO CHARLES DARWIN.

Cambridge, January 23, 1860.

My dear Darwin,—You have my hurried letter telling you of the arrival of the remainder of the sheets of the reprint, and of the stir I had made for a reprint in Boston. Well, all looked pretty well, when lo, we found that a second New York publishing house had announced a reprint also! I wrote then to both New York publishers, asking them to give way to the author and his reprint of a revised edition. I got an answer from Harpers that they withdraw; from the Appletons, that they had got the book out (and the next day I saw a copy); but that, “if the work should have any considerable sale, we certainly shall be disposed to pay the author reasonably and liberally.”

The Appletons being thus out with their reprint, the Boston house declined to go on. So I wrote to the Appletons, taking them at their word, offering to aid their reprint, to give them the use of the alterations in the London reprint, as soon as I find out what they are, etc., etc. And I sent them the first leaf, and asked them to insert in their future issue the additional matter from Butler, which tells just right. So there the matter stands. If you furnish any matter in advance of the London third edition, I will make them pay for it.

I may get something for you. All got is clear gain; but it will not be very much, I suppose.

Such little notices in the papers as have yet appeared are quite handsome and considerable.

I hope next week to get printed sheets of my review from New Haven, and send them to you, and will ask you to pass them on to Dr. Hooker.

To fulfill your request, I ought to tell you what I think the weakest, and what the best, part of your book. But this is not easy, nor to be done in a word or two. The best part, I think, is the whole, that is, its plan and treatment, the vast amount of facts and acute inferences handled as if you had a perfect mastery of them. I do not think twenty years too much time to produce such a book in.

Style clear and good, but now and then wants revision for little matters (p. 97, self-fertilizes itself, etc.).

Then your candor is worth everything to your cause. It is refreshing to find a person with a new theory who frankly confesses that he finds difficulties, insurmountable at least for the present. I know some people who never have any difficulties to speak of.

The moment I understood your premises, I felt sure you had a real foundation to hold on. Well, if one admits your premises, I do not see how he is to stop short of your conclusions, as a probable hypothesis at least.

It naturally happens that my review of your book does not exhibit anything like the full force of the impression the book has made upon me. Under the circumstances I suppose I do your theory more good here, by bespeaking for it a fair and favorable consideration, and by standing noncommitted as to its full conclusion, than I should if I announced myself a convert; nor could I say the latter, with truth.

Well, what seems to me the weakest point in the book is the attempt to account for the formation of organs, the making of eyes, etc., by natural selection. Some of this reads quite Lamarckian.

The chapter on Hybridism is not a weak, but a strong chapter. You have done wonders there. But still you have not accounted, as you may be held to account, for divergence up to a certain extent producing increased fertility of the crosses, but carried one short, almost imperceptible, step more, giving rise to sterility, or reversing the tendency. Very likely you are on the right track; but you have something to do yet in that department.

Enough for the present.

I am not insensible to your compliments, the very high compliment which you pay me in valuing my opinion. You evidently think more of it than I do, though from the way I write to you, and especially to Hooker, this might not be inferred from the reading of my letters.

I am free to say that I never learnt so much from one book as I have from yours. There remain a thousand things I long to say about it.

Ever yours,
Asa Gray.

TO CHARLES L. BRACE.

1861 (?)

Dear Brace,—I should criticise various things in your last “Times” article, if you were here to talk it over with me.

If you expected Huxley to do what you criticise him for not doing, you would naturally be disappointed. His merit, and his way as a lecturer, is to select some good topic or point of view and make a clear exposition of it, the clearness of which very much depends upon his not scattering himself over too much ground. He naturally kept himself to matters he could handle well, and let alone those upon which, as we very well know, he had nothing in particular to say.

1. “Merest fancies,” “baseless fabric of a dream,” etc.

Why, what made Owen an evolutionist as early as Darwin? And what has made so many naturalists, Mivart, and lately Dana, for instance, evolutionists, who yet think nothing of Natural Selection?

But to illustrate. You allow that the evolutionary pedigree of the horse is made out. But what had “Natural Selection” to do with the making this out?

It would have been all the very same, both the evidence and the ground of the inference, if Natural Selection had never been propounded. There is no evidence how the forms were selected, there is simply the fact of the series of forms, which, with other like evidence, brings conviction to most naturalists that one has somehow come from the other. And this conviction is about as strong to those who do not believe “Natural Selection” will explain it, as those who do.

2. Professor Guyot, you mean. Dana avowedly adopts from Guyot.

3. To those who talk or think of necessary evolution, or, like Spencer, deduce it ex necessitate rei, this matter of immense time is very pertinent. I don’t think Darwin is bothered by it much. On my way of thinking, it is no bother at all, considering what a deal of time there has been anyway.

4. Do you mean “hybrid forms”? I fail to see what hybrids, that is, mules from the crossing of related species, has to do with it, one way or the other. Nobody (of clear conceptions) supposes new species come from the mixture of other species. That is a way to confuse or blend species, not to originate them. But there is no “want of hybrids;” there are plenty of them, and they have mixed some few species (dogs, for instance); but they play no important part in the matters you are considering.

“Want of connecting forms in living species,” that is to the purpose. Well, as a systematic botanist, I wish there was a want. The connecting forms are my great trouble every day. You would save me an awful deal of trouble, time, and constant uncertainty, if you would cause them to be wanting!

5. So you will not accept the motto “ex uno disce omnes.”

If you admit the horse’s evolution as proved, does not that carry an implication of evolution in other lines, of which similar, but fewer steps are known? Or are all evolutions those of cavalry?

Cambridge, June 17, 1862.

Dear Brace,—Thanks for the “World.” Who wield its destinies?

It is, I suppose, your article on Darwin, a very good one, for its purpose and space.

Before you too confidently reject the evidence for the existence of man in the diluvial period, just turn over a very impartial and good article by Pictet,—a good judge of such matters,—in the March number of the “Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève,” “De la Question sur l’Homme Fossile.”

I presume it is in the Astor Library. If it is not, you may tell Mr. Cogswell there might as well not be any Astor Library.

Ever thine,
A. Gray.

Cambridge, April 22, 1862 (?)

Dear Brace,—You are very welcome to such casual criticism as I can offer on your two pages of manuscript.

The general fact of a segregated people (or individuals of an animal species) becoming best adapted to the particular climate, etc., through Natural Selection is clear enough, the best adapted alone surviving in the long run, and the peculiarities transmitted by the close breeding.

But what your statements tend to make out is, not the tendency of a human race to return to its original type, but only the tendency of the causes which produced a certain effect once, to produce it again, the circumstances continuing,—to produce it in the Fellahs as it produced it in the remote ancestors of the Pharaohs.

That is all safe enough. But your case does not prove that unless you make out that the Egyptian race was nearly destroyed by crossings.

I do not know, but I doubt if you can show that the crossings were ever enough to modify the Egyptian people, at least the common people, who make up the bulk. Slight infusions, you see, would be worked out. The foreign though conquering race would be less prolific and less enduring than the native, etc., etc. So is it not likely that in the Fellahs you have the representatives of the old Egyptians continued, not reproduced, as your remarks would partly lead one to suppose your meaning?

Besides, once having got a race you must not make too much of climate, to the overlooking of the wonderful persistence of any variety when close bred. See the Jews: the nose remains hooked, etc., under all climates.

Again, in your last sentence. When you unscientific people take up a scientific principle you are apt to make too much of it, to push it to conclusions beyond what is warranted by the facts. But, because a particular race has persisted in Egypt, how do you know that it is the only race capable of perpetuating itself?

If there had been a large infusion of different people in Egypt, and if they had exterminated the old race, do you not suppose this would have established itself, perpetuated itself, and that its particular adaptations to the climate would have been different from that of the present race?

If you cut off all future immigration into North America, would the Indians resume possession of the country? or else our descendants become a copper-colored race?

Enough for the present. When you have cracked these nuts, send me, if you please, another sheet.

Ever yours cordially,
Asa Gray.

Cambridge, July 6, 1863.

Dear Brace,—Yours of 20th ult. came just as J. was off for New Haven and I getting ready to go to her aid.

We came back only on Thursday, or rather Friday morning. My hands so full that I could not write to Darwin, to whom I owe a long letter, till to-night. I will now inclose your note.

It would be very like a chemist to think that external influences will explain everything. But I presume he believes that peculiarities are heritable. If he does, then he thinks he can explain, or will be able to explain, the origination of variations. I cannot, that is, to any extent, and do not expect to. When he will show us how external influences actually worked to change a peach into a nectarine, I will consider his proposition.

If he means by “external influences” whatever has brought about the change, very well. I, of course, allow that every variation has a cause, a physical cause. But it seems to me you may as well say that conception and the production of a normal offspring is the result of “external influences” as the production of an abnormal (variant) offspring.

But there is no use writing at random.

You ask me whether I adhere to my notions before expressed, without at all showing me how they have been impugned.

I should rather expect Guyot to indorse Beaumont; a theological bias would act strongly.

But I rely most on Lartet, Coulon, and Pictet, for the age of deposit. Yet it may still be an open question....

Darwin, on account of his health, has to live away from London, and is a recluse. I give no letters to him, least of all to a lively inquisitive Yankee like Beecher, who would give him a fit of dyspepsia at once, from mere excitement.

I have the Imperial Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg honorary membership; quite a feather, as they are choice and few. Diploma just come.

Ever yours,
A. Gray.

TO R. W. CHURCH.

May 7, 1861.

It was very good of you to write to me (by your letter of 28th of March) when I believe that a former letter of yours was still unacknowledged by me. Your letters always give me much pleasure.

What you say of “Essays and Reviews” seems to me most sensible and well considered; the best thing I have read about the book, viz., that, “with many good and true things in it, it is a reckless book,” and that some of the writers had not taken the trouble to clear up their own thoughts and to form orderly and consistent notions before publishing upon such delicate topics.

I have not yet read the book; have only looked it over, and read some of the criticisms. When I have a few days’ leisure in the country, in July, I mean to read it carefully. After the flurry is over, I hope the book will receive the proper kind of handling in England, by the proper men. I wish you would think it in your way to write an essay upon some of the points at issue, upon which inconsiderate views are likely to be taken upon either side.

I confess to a strong dislike of Baden Powell’s writings. He seems to have had a coarse, materialistic, non-religious mind; at least, he is not the sort of man I should select to illustrate the delicate relations between religion and science.

I am gratified, also, by your apprehending the spirit and object of my essay on Darwin so much better than many who write to me about it. All it pretends to is to warn the reckless and inconsiderate to state the case as it is; to protest against the folly of those who would, it would seem, go on to fire away the very ramparts of the citadel, in the defense of needless outposts; and, as you justly remark, to clear the way for a fair discussion of the new theory on its merits and evidence. We must use the theory a while in botany and in zoölogy, and see how it will work; in this way a few years will test it thoroughly. I incline to think that its principles will be to a certain extent admitted in science, but that, as Darwin conceives it, it will prove quite insufficient.

As to our country, we have been, as a people, undergoing a steady demoralization for the last fifteen or twenty years, the natural end of which lately seemed to be that we should crumble into decay almost without an effort at recovery. If it had been sought under legal forms and in a less outrageous spirit, I think the North would have consented to the peaceful separation of the cotton States, and we should have prospered by the separation. But it has become clear that there would be no living with such a people as our neighbors would be, so long as they allow themselves (against the better judgment of the best) to be ruled by the political demagogues who now hold sway over them. It is clear we must fight, and we had better do it now, and fight for the integrity of the country and the enforcement of the laws. So we are fairly and justly in it, and we are going to conquer the South. They have appealed to force. They must abide the consequences of the appeal, and, we trust, God will help the right. So you may expect to hear of stirring times here. Ever, with great regard,

Yours most cordially,
Asa Gray.

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

January 25, 1861.

The Union is overthrown by a conspiracy which would have been kept within bounds, and soon shut itself up, if the border slave States cared enough for the Union to take hold, or even allow it to be arrested or checked. But no, they must become insane, like the rest, and help it along. Virginia will not take hold and second Kentucky and Tennessee, fighting nobly by Johnson, Crittenden, etc., declare against treason first, and then arrange terms, which are all ready, all they want, for composing the difficulties.

But Cottondom will not have peace and union, and Virginia, etc., are foolish enough to help their game. That the border Southern States will be the principal sufferers will be only a righteous retribution for their guilt.

If, in fact, we only belong to a partnership which any of the partners can dissolve at will, then the Union is not worth having. We must do the best we can without it, and if Missouri would prosper, she should stay with us.

If peace is wanted, the reasonable proposition, “no more territory to be acquired without a majority of two thirds of the States,” would give it. With that you may do what you like, or rather what you can, in the present Territories. No more of the continent is worth having, either for North or South.

Posterity will judge rightly, and Toombs, Cobb, Floyd, etc., will go down to their graves as base, dishonored traitors.

My fighting days are over, anyway. I have had the misfortune to lose the end of my left thumb, by an accident, just at the base of the nail.

May 25, 1861.

I am very glad to hear from you. I believe I have a former letter from you unanswered. Lately I mailed to you some botanical pamphlets, one containing the Xantus California plants. But in these times I had not the heart to write you. You have seen your dream of peace policy fall in pieces, and Douglas coming out for the war. You have also seen enough to perceive that under the let-alone policy Missouri also would have seceded, under the same discipline which has been applied elsewhere. In which event, let alone, St. Louis would dwindle to a country village.

No, the first and paramount duty of a country is to protect and preserve itself against destruction. The Constitution and government must be maintained, and treason put down if we are able to do it.

If it can’t be done, then, and then only, may we submit to disintegration.

Stick firm to the Union, and Missouri will come out well. I am sorry for the bloodshed at St. Louis. Your population is hard to manage. But Harney, as you say, is doing well, and I expect to see your State soon a loyal one. Even those with secession affinities must soon see their own interests. It is impossible there should be peace,—peace is not worth having till the rebellion, based on a plot formed years ago, is put down.

If you think me belligerent, I am nothing to Agassiz. Of course we shall all suffer severely. But better to suffer in devotion to the Union than prosper in petty fragments.

Enough of this. May God preserve and keep you, and let us hear from you when you can; for we take great interest in you, and know your position is a trying one.

Cambridge, August 6, 1861.

My dear Engelmann,—As soon as I got clear of college work, my wife and I started off (on the 12th of July) to visit my mother and friends in Oneida County, New York, where we rode and drove about in the fine air, over a most beautiful country, and enjoyed ourselves to the full, to her great advantage; also mine. Then we cut across the State to Pennsylvania, visited the coal region of north Pennsylvania; traveled very leisurely; passed through New York, seeing the Torreys three hours, and so to Litchfield, Connecticut, where Mrs. G. is left, and I am at home, to set to work again, having done nothing in botany except to teach since last April.

Now I am going to set to work as soon as correspondence is cleared off.

I found here also a letter from Dr. Parry, and have named the specimens in both, sending the answer to you for forwarding, also Dr. Parry’s letter to me.

He can’t miss it if he keeps at work between Denver and Salt Lake, climbing to truly alpine regions as often as he can.

Dr. Hooker sent me last spring a fine cast of a bust of Robert Brown. To-day I have also from him a splendid one of his father, Sir William. Tell Fendler that Mr. Shaw should procure both if possible for the Library of Hort. Bot., Missouri.

What next? A young gardener has found a locality of Calluna vulgaris, covering almost an acre, within twenty-five miles of Boston; a case to add to Scolopendrium, Marsilea, etc., but most of all, striking and unexpected. It grows in low ground, and has every appearance of being indigenous.

August 27.

I hope and trust that Frémont will be strong enough to keep the war out of your neighborhood. The citizens of Missouri ought to volunteer in such numbers as to keep the rebels out of the State and keep the State true and firm in the Union. It is the cheapest and most honorable way, and will save property, avoid distress, etc.

This rebellion is certainly going to be put down, no matter at what cost, and property at St. Louis will be worth more than ever yet before you and I reach three score and ten.

November 11.

I think very little of Unionists who have been “made Secessionists” by anything. What matter whether you have one fifth, one tenth, or four fifths Unionists, if they will not fight to put down Secessionists,—they might as well be Secessionists out and out. Maryland and Missouri will not and must not be allowed to secede or to do seceders’ work, cost what it will. And it is a great blessing to them that we restrain them. The Union must be preserved; suffering is a very small matter in comparison—all must take their part, and the rebels must suffer hard till they give up. We are only beginning to fight. If Missouri wanted security she should have put down her secessionists herself with the strong hand, at the beginning. So of Kentucky. But she has been forced to find out and feel her duty and her honor, and to act.

God save the Union, and confusion to all traitors.

TO DANIEL CADY EATON.

Cambridge, October 4, 1861.

Your three parcels and letter of October first have duly come. I believe I never answered your note of August 28.

I can’t abide writing letters nowadays. But I think often of you. You are happy in being able to do something direct. I wish I could. Find me a useful place in the army, and I will go at once.

My wife and I have scraped up $550, all we can scrape, and lent it to the United States. I am amazed that people do not come forward with their money—those that can’t go to fight. I wish I could do both....

I have to-day a letter from Wright, September 4. He is of late botanizing with more spirit than formerly.

A sailing-vessel is up here for Santiago. I shall write by it, the United States mail by steamer being so interrupted, and perhaps send some publications, newspapers, etc. But I shall leave for you to send the “Flora of the British West Indies,” as you suggest. I could not spare my copy....

I hope this taking up of large transport vessels means something, and something prompt and thorough.

Thus far one is sick and sad, so little is done.

I had some hopes that your good father would be put at the head of the Commissary Department. I trust he will get promotion somewhat according to his deserts anyhow. Oh for faithful and honest officers and officials!...

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

Cambridge, January 15, 1862.

I do not like to write to you much about the war, and that is much reason why I have not sooner replied to yours of December 9.

My brother-in-law and his cousin are both officers in Burnside’s expedition, which we expect will do something.

Mrs. Gray and I send warmest New Year greetings to you and Mrs. E., and hope you may feel all right and country safe in 1863.

February 20.

Bravo for Illinois, to which victory at Fort Donelson is due, and bravo for Tennessee and Alabama full of Union men! Does not your old Union blood rise? Pray, now drop all your let-treason-alone, do-nothing-disorganizing notions, and go in for the country, the whole country, reinstate it first, and then we will all go in and make it what it should be. The ungenerous conduct of England shows what a condition we should be in as a fraction, and she playing off one portion against the other, and bullying both.

I pray Congress to put on taxes, five per cent direct on property and income, and heavy indirect besides. What is property! I would fight till every cent is gone, and would offer my own life freely; so I do not value the lives or property of rebels above my own. God bless you.

May 22.

A most lovely spring here. We all flourish and prosper, and rejoice in the strengthening of our national power, and advancing restoration of the Union, with hopes of hanging leaders of the rebellion, exiling a good many, and pardoning all the rank and file who will come back with a good grace to their allegiance. If they will not, let them beware! Væ victis to such.

The country is to be kept in the Union. If the people choose to stay, let them, and peace be with them. If they wish to emigrate, very well. The North, aided by immigrating Teutons, has great colonizing power, and we can rapidly settle Virginia, Tennessee, Mississippi, etc.

There, this is enough for the present to rile you.

As to Euphorbias, the published names here must take precedence to unpublished names of Shuttleworth, etc.

Ever your most peaceful friend,

Asa Gray.

TO CHARLES DARWIN.

Cambridge, October 10, 1860.

Thanks for very interesting letter of September 10. I am much pressed now, or would write a long gossiping letter. The bound copy of “Origin” is just received from Murray. Many thanks....

I believe I have seen a pod or two of Horseradish; but they are rare. Your germinations show curious resemblance of dimorphic-crosses with hybrid-crosses, as shown by Naudin; very interesting and capital points for you.

January (?), 1862.

I imagine it is now universally felt here that if we do not do it [i. e., carry on the fighting] we shall have to eat much dirt; that the establishment of a rival power on our long southern line of the free States, to be played off against us, is not to be submitted to if it can be prevented at any sacrifice. God help us, indeed, if our honorable existence is to have no better safeguard than the generosity or sense of justice of more powerful nations! As to slavery, the course of things is getting to meet your views, as it is clear must be, if the South continues obstinate. If they give up war they may save their institution in their own States, to have the chance of abolishing it themselves in the only safe and easy way, with time and the gradual competition of white labor. But obstinate resistance will surely bring on wide-sweeping manumission.

You see that we are not going to have war [with England] at present. And it appears that the decision of our government will be as unitedly and thoroughly sustained by the whole people as if it had been the other way; contrary to Mr. Russell’s prediction, and to our dear friend Dr. Boott’s, who writes about our “mob” in a way he would not if he were here to see. Look at an English mob urging up their government so that they felt obliged to back up their demands, with a menacing force on our borders; and making such a peremptory demand as you justly say, “entirely on Wilkes’ acting as judge;” a matter which our government would as promptly concede as yours could ask.

Seemann wrote me that the general belief at the clubs and in the City was that our government wanted to get into war with England for an excuse to give up the South. A pretty idea they must have of our wisdom and discretion! Dear Boott is firmly convinced that we have all along been trying to quarrel with England. The belief here is nearly universal the other way, and those who like England best, and perhaps the coolest and best-informed men, have been more and more dissatisfied as time went on.

What has caused this lamentable state of things, this complete misunderstanding? Plainly this: the secessionists in England have adroitly managed the matter and led public opinion in various lines, but all in one direction, inimical to us; and they did not think it too great a stretch to make John Bull believe that we were insane enough to want an English quarrel. In this they have been ably seconded by a few papers here, mainly by those whose loyalty is deeply suspected, and whose influence is as nothing; which are nearly as scurrilous as the “Saturday Review,” with no redeeming ability, and you have the result.

Will the evidence that this mail carries satisfy the English that we want to live in peace with them?

But as to good feeling, I am afraid it is too late to expect that.

We were hurt at first by your putting our rebels on the same footing as a government with which yours was in most amicable relations,—and by the general assumption at once that we were gone past redemption, by the failure to see that the power had gone from the hands of those who were always making trouble with your government in some petty way or other, etc., till I think it is generally believed that the governing influence in England desires to have us a weak and divided people, and would do a good deal to secure it.

I am sorry to say that this is the general feeling; and this is now very much intensified.

The feelings of many are very hostile, and they would like to be strong that they might show it. Those of others, who have been exceedingly fond of England, always defending her when possible, and these are mine, are, that we must be strong to be secure and respected,—natural selection quickly crushes out weak nations; that we have tried long enough to have intimate relations between the governments, or the peoples in general. Naturalists, etc., being enlightened people, can be as intimate as they like; but nationally let each say, “God bless you, and let us see as little of each other as possible,” each going our own way.

Well, enough of this.

Some of the representations of us in the English papers would be amusing if they did not now do so great harm. One would think it was generally thought that there was no law and order here, nor gentlemanly conduct, nor propriety of deportment among the poorer and laboring people. I wish you could come and see. As to such things, and as to intelligence, education, etc., I have sometimes thought of the picture one could draw from individual cases. Take one—very confidentially—for I would not hurt a really good fellow by exposing his ignorance of what he might be expected to know. Here we lately had a Cambridge graduate (F. L. S., and godson of an English baronet) who in one conversation let us know most frankly that he had no idea where Quito was, or that there were two houses of Congress in the United States, and was puzzled to know whether Boston, United States, time was faster or slower than that of Greenwich!...

February 18, 1862.

Accept a hasty line at the present, when I am busy above measure.

Thanks for the Primula paper, which I have barely looked over.

I do hope that you and the other fourteen of your household are out of bed and done with influenza.

As I have not given you up notwithstanding your very shocking principles and prejudices against design in nature, so we shall try to abide your longitudinarian defection. I suppose it is longitude, and I am sorry to see that there is a wide and general desire in that meridian that we (United States) should fall to pieces. But the more you want us to, the more we won’t, and the more important it appears to us that we should be a strong and unbroken power. God help us, if we do not keep strong enough, at whatever cost now it may be, to resist the influence of a country which looks upon the continuation of our steady policy to protect and diversify our domestic industry as a wrong and sin against it. No, no, we must have our own way. But the triumph of the Republicans was the political destruction of the very people who were always making trouble with England, and, if you would only let us and have some faith in the North, we should have been permanently on the best of terms.

What you complain of in the Boston dinner was indeed lamentable; such men should not have talked bosh, even at a little private ovation, and we have reason to know some of them were heartily ashamed of it as soon as they saw it in print. It was immediately spoken of here, by influential people, some of whom refused to attend the dinner, and in at least one paper, in a tone like your own. It was really as bad as the speeches of some members of Parliament, and worse because it was foolish.

The fact is, a set of cunning fellows on both sides of the water (but here utterly characterless) have contrived to make both English and Yankees believe that each was bent upon quarreling with the other.

Your thinking of me “as an Englishman” would once have been a compliment, and is what from my well-known feelings and expressions I have passed for among my friends here. Had the North gone on giving in to the South as for years past, I should have been one, at least in residence, just as soon as I could have got out of the country. I thank God, it has been otherwise, and that I have a country to be proud of, and which I will gladly suffer for, if need be. With all its weakness and follies (and I know them well) I go for my country, and to be friendly with those we ought to be on good terms with. I am cured of some illusions. We shall do very well, and the two countries will be on the best of terms when we are strong; till then we must not expect it.

If it is the old question of struggle for life, good feeling has not much to do with it: the weak must go to the wall, because it can’t help it. “Blessed are the strong, for they shall inherit the earth.”

My wife, who is loath to strike you from her books, begs you to make allowances for the people here, who were so very cocky at having caught two such ineffable scamps as Mason and Slidell, whom we have reason to hate with perfect hatred; that they thought of nothing else, and did not mean to be saucy to England. But you have made us sore, there is no denying it. We did not allow enough for longitude.

Her former message did not refer to Boott (though he is unfortunately influenced by longitude; but is a Yankee born), nor to Hooker, who, Gallio fashion, cares for none of these things; thinks us unwise for fighting, I presume; but we perfectly agree to say nothing about such matters. It is odd that you all fail to appreciate that it is simply a struggle for existence on our part, and that men will persist in thinking their existence of some consequence to themselves, though you prove the contrary ever so plain; and will strike or grasp or kick, right and left, in an undignified way sometimes; which the safe and sound bystander, coolly looking on, may not appreciate, not sharing his feelings, telling him the world will get on quite as well without him; yet he somehow does not quite like it.

March 6.

I have your note of February 16, about Melastomaceæ. The test of a good theory is said to be its power of predicting. If your speculations lead you to predict the style curved to one side in Melastomaceæ, and the prediction is verified, that will be a great matter in your favor. Why, you are coming out so strong in final causes that they should make a D. D. of you at Cambridge!

I shall be pleased if I can help you about Rhexia. R. Virginica grows not far from here, and I will set to watching it next summer. But I fear it may not help you, as it is stated in our “Flora of North America” to have “anthers uniform.” I see, however, the phrase, “style somewhat declined,” in the character; which must be looked to. The character was drawn wholly from dried specimens. I have good details from fresh ones drawn by Mr. Sprague, but cannot just now lay hands on them.

Freely point out anything else you want looked at. I have now a very zealous pupil, who will be glad to be intrusted with looking up plants and observing.

Ever yours, cordially,
Asa Gray.

There is some jolly science in the “Saturday Review,” now and then; as in December 28, p. 665, where we are informed that icebergs “are formed by the splashing of the waves on the coast of Labrador.”

Mill being “the greatest logician in England,” I send you an American reprint of a specimen of his logic, which I know you will like.

We are very sad here at the death of the president of our university, who had also many warm friends in England.

March 31.

Yours of the 15th came this evening. To-morrow I am busy all day in college (where I began my course this year with lectures on Fertilization, developing your views on orchid-insect fertilization, dimorphism, etc., etc., to an interested class!), so I must drop a line for you into a letter for Boott, for Wednesday’s post.

A friend has just handed me Morell’s new book, which, looking at psychology from the physiological side, I see brings up several notions which have been turning over in my mind for some years. He is coming out a good Darwinian, I see, and is quite of my way of thinking about design. You see I am determined to baptize [“The Origin of Species”], nolens volens, which will be its salvation. But if you won’t have it done, it will be damned, I fear....

Things move on here, on the whole, very well.

Yes, I will promise not to hate you; quite the contrary!

Our sensitiveness as to England was the natural result of the strong filial feeling on our part. It was very undignified, I dare say. But I think we are getting bravely over it, and getting really not to care what the Old Country may think or say, so it lets us alone.

As to Rebeldom, there is now hardly any State that we have not got some foothold in.

I do not do so much scientific work as before the war, but still I keep pottering away. From now till July, I can expect to do little besides my college duties. Ever, dear Darwin, your cordial friend and true Yankee,

A. Gray.

May 18.

Yesterday came by post the sheets B-I of your Orchid book.

This evening (Sunday) I have opened the parcel and read introduction and chapter i. What a charming book it is! You are right in issuing it in this form. It would be a sin not to do so.

I fear, though, that no publisher would reprint it here; though I may, on reading farther, conclude to offer it to the Appletons, who should have the refusal. But it will surely be popular in England, where orchids are popular and the species known to most intelligent and educated people. I hope soon to get the other sheets. I am perfectly delighted with O. pyramidalis, and must extract the whole account of its fertilization for “Silliman’s Journal.”

Our only orchis, that is, O. spectabilis, I brought last summer from western New York, and planted. I shall in a week have three or four spikes coming into flower, and I will cover one and leave the others exposed. They are in a wooded part of the garden, like their natural habitat. The rest of our Ophrydeæ are Habenarias (Platanthera).

I must recur to your letter about Cypripedium and see what you wanted of it, that is, what observation.

If there be any adaptation, be it ever so pretty, I shall never see it without your direction. What a skill and genius you have for these researches! Even for the structure of the flower of the Ophrydeæ I have to-night learned more than I ever knew before.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

Cambridge, April 26, 1861.

My dear Friend,—My duties in the university at this season are very pressing. Besides, we are now opening a war, upon the determination of which our very existence depends, and upon which we are to concentrate all our strength and soul, so I have no time nor heart to write of botany just now....

Ever, dear De Candolle, yours most cordially,

Asa Gray.

December 16.

We do not often exchange letters now, and in these for us trying times in the United States, though far removed from the actual scenes of war, and not much interrupted in my botanical studies, except by distracting thoughts, I write as few letters as I can. The unfriendly attitude of England gives us much concern. Were it not for that, it is thought we should soon put an end to our rebellion. But I will not write of such matters now.

July 2, 1862.

No fear about our army, now so great. It is largely composed of materials such as nothing but a high sense of duty could keep for a year in military life. It will dissolve like last winter’s snow when no more needed.

While I write, a great battle is in progress, decisive if we gain it and take the rebel capital, simply prolonging the strife if we do not. We can raise at once another army if need be; and yet another. Indeed 300,000 more men are now to be accepted, to recruit our ranks and make a sure thing of the result.

Confident of our cause, we expect confidently the favor of Providence....

What a charming book is that of Darwin on orchid fertilization!

TO CHARLES WRIGHT.

Cambridge, April 17, 1862.

I am at work in college now, you know, and it is very hard work. This last vacation I had to make a new edition and new additions to my “Manual,” etc., and to do it in a hurry, and I have at length, for the first time, found out that I am growing old. In fact I broke down under it, and have injured my health a little.... I doubt if I ever recover the spring and vim of former times. But we shall see....

My hard work has got correspondence all horridly behindhand, and determined me to draw in my horns, and drop a good deal of it. My desk has long been so covered deep with unanswered letters, etc., that I have abandoned it, and now sit over on the other side of the table.

If I sit down and answer a letter right off the day it comes, as I am now doing with yours, and as I do with purely business letters, etc., then it is safe. If I add it to the heap, it is a gone case, and I fear will never be really answered.

Eaton, too, as you know, has been very hard worked, in his father’s office.

Well, there is no State now in some part of which the star-spangled banner does not float. Lincoln is a trump, a second Washington, steady, conservative, no fanatical abolitionist. Foote, of your State of Connecticut, is putting down his foot on the Mississippi. McClellan is to fight a great battle at Yorktown. Another bloody battle may be fought near Corinth, Mississippi. New Orleans will soon be ours, please God, and then this wicked rebellion will be done for. I pray God I may live to see the end of it, and the States brought back, quietly if they will, forcibly if they must.

I know it will rejoice your heart to see the thing done. And it will be worth all it costs.

Come now, here is a good long letter for a man as tired as I to write, who has been five or six hours in lecture-room, working hard.

August 1.

Here is a bit of reading for you,—substitute for letters, which in truth I have not surfeited you with lately. Who can write letters in these trying times?...

Last spring my health felt pretty seriously impaired. But by end of June I was able to diminish my college work a little, and take the rest easier, and so now I feel very much better, more like my old self, and I am beginning to clear off my table that I may get at work again on that everlasting South Pacific Exploring Expedition.

There is a charming book out, by Darwin, on the fertilization of orchids by insects. It will open your eyes to most curious things. I have verified much myself here, and made observations which Darwin regards as very interesting. I send you a copy of the book through Eaton, as a present.

Any observations or notes you make I will send to Darwin.

TO CHARLES DARWIN.

July 2, 1862.

I am glad if my off-hand orchid notes interest you, or prove of the least use. I am daily expecting a copy to send you of my notice of the early chapters of your book. I will continue in the ensuing number. And whatever of the notes I send you seem to you worth touching upon, you have only to indicate them, and send back my memoranda, and I will take them up. But as to Cypripediums, I should like to have an opportunity of examining them (except C. acaule) more at large, and growing.

A week from to-morrow, I expect to be able to leave Cambridge, to go down, with my examination papers to read, to my beau-père’s place on the shore, for a few days. Then I will try to look up and bring home living Rhexia Virginica; and also I expect to have a look at Calopogon pulchellus, with its strong bearded labellum. And I hope it will not be too late to get plenty of Mitchella repens, which my pupils do not bring me in as they ought. I want to see if long-styled stigma and short differ, and also the pollen of the two, as they do in Houstonia, of which I hope I sent you Rothrock’s observations. At least I will send when he has completed them.

Precocious fertilization in the bud was much noticed here very long ago by Torrey, in Viola, Specularia, etc., etc., also in Impatiens, about which see my “Genera Illustrata,” volume ii. I once mentioned it to you as good evidence of close fertilization. As to pollen-tubes of such, I have no observations of my own, but a memory or fancy that they were shown to me by Torrey. I will ask him, and have him look at Specularia.

As to the French lady’s translation and commentary on the “Origin,” I am not so much surprised. As I view it, there are only two sides to the main question. Very likely she takes one side in a thorough-going and consistent manner; and either she is right, or I am right, i. e., there is design in nature, or there is not. The no-design view, if one can bring himself to entertain it, may well enough lead to all she says, and we may very much admire how collision and destruction of least-favored brings about apparently orderly results,—apparent contrivances or adaptation of means to ends. On the other hand, the implication of a designing mind must bring with it a strong implication of design in matters where we could not directly prove it.

If you grant an intelligent designer anywhere in Nature, you may be confident that he has had something to do with the “contrivances” in your orchids.

I have just received and glanced at Bentham’s address, and am amused to see how your beautiful flank movement with the Orchid book has nearly overcome his opposition to the “Origin.”

The military simile above leads me to speak of your wonder that I can think of science at all in the midst of war. Well, first, we get used to it. Second, we need something to turn to, and happy are they who, forbidden to engage personally in the war (as I am ever itching to do), have something to turn to. Third, I do not do much, do nothing, in fact, except my college duties now for months, and that is the reason I have time to write to you, and be interested in all your doings.

If you suppose everything is paralyzed and desolate here, and the country greatly put back, read a very sensible letter of an Englishman in the “Spectator” of June 7. It is very just and true. We shall recuperate fast enough, and be better off than ever, as much prosperity as is good for us, and more solid, more independent, more self-contained, which is our great desideratum. Free trade be blowed; we must needs have high duties on imports, and it is better that we should. By these and by direct taxes—the tax-bill just passed—we shall have to pay over largely. Very well.

Just at present our prospects (viz., evening of July 3) are looking badly enough. McClellan has clearly been overmatched and driven to the wall, after very obstinate fighting, with very heavy loss on both sides. Whether it is retrievable with reinforcements, or whether the whole campaign has to be begun again against Richmond, is not yet clear. Anyway we have got to put shoulder to the wheel anew, and it may be done, we suppose, more easily and far more promptly than last year. All we ask is that Europe shall let us alone.

Enough for to-day.

Providence, R. I., July 29, 1862.

No more news in the orchids line. I am making two or three days of holiday, and yesterday I found a few specimens of Gymnadenia tridentata. But the flowers are too small to examine well with a hand lens. If they keep, I will take them back to Cambridge in a day or two and see what to make of them....

As to the country, you will see by this time that we have not the least idea of abandoning the struggle. We have learned only that there is no use trying any longer to pick up our eggs gently, very careful not to break any. The South forces us at length to do what it would have been more humane to have done from the first, i. e., to act with vigor, not to say rigor.

We shall be complained of for our savageness, no doubt, whereas we feel that our error has been all the other way. But the independence, the total indifference to English feeling which you recommended last year, has come at length; now we care nothing what Mrs. Grundy says.

Cambridge, September 22, 1862.

Your pleasant epistles of August 21 and September 4 are to be acknowledged, with thanks. But I have nothing in particular to communicate, except our hearty congratulations that your boy and Mrs. Darwin are recovering so well.

Tell Leonard that I was pleased both with his attention in writing and with the ocular proof of his convalescence in his being able so soon to use a pen. His requests shall be kept in view; the five-cent stamp I send now; dare say I shall sometime pick up the thirty and ninety, though I never saw the latter, nor the twelve, twenty, and twenty-four on envelopes (the twenty-four cent he must have already, as it is often used on my envelopes to you).

Bravo for Horace, whose illustration of Natural Selection as to the adders is capital. A chip of the old block, he evidently is.

I told you that Rothrock had gone to the war, and perhaps has already been under fire; probably not. I had intended that next spring he should do up Houstonia more perfectly, and work up this and some related matters for his thesis when he comes up for examination. But all this is broken up by his enlistment....

I have been lazy about all my writing, working all day at dry and dull systematic botany, which you anathematize. But if I get time to turn it over, I will say a few words on the last chapter of your Orchid book. But it opens up a knotty sort of question about accident or design, which one does not care to meddle with much until one can feel his way further than I can.

October 4, 1862.

I have just been reading Max Müller’s lecture on the Science of Language with much interest. But perhaps what has interested me most is, after all, his perfect appreciation and happy use of Natural Selection, and the very complete analogy between diversification of species and diversification of language. I can hardly think of any publication which in England could be more useful to your cause than this volume is, or should be. I see also with what great effect you may use it in our occasional discussion about design; indeed I hardly see how to avoid conclusion adverse to special design, though I think I see indications of a way out.

Depend on it, Max Müller will be of real service to you.

October 13.

I have been so much occupied that I deferred to the last moment to write out my second notice of your Orchid book for “Silliman’s Journal.” I wrote out Saturday evening what I could, and to-day have finished and sent off my manuscript to New Haven. The greater part consists of a record of some of my observations last summer, very hurriedly penned, and sent off. I trust you will be pleased, and will think that my little contributions cannot be better hatched than under your wings.

I hope that my young correspondent is fast recovering strength. Tell him that I have no more stamps for him yet, but shall pick up his desiderata one of these days.

I have some nice live roots of Cypripedium, two or three species to send you, and mean to send Mitchella.

How Hooker does praise up your book, in the “Gardener’s Chronicle!”

Cambridge, November 10, 1862.

It is refreshing to me that you find the special correspondent of the “Times” detestable.

Your comments upon our affairs always show such a good spirit that you need not fear even my wife’s “indignation.”

We are sorry that you suffer in England; but you must blame the rebels for it, not us, and your Manchester people should have looked earlier to India for cotton.

You don’t see, as you would if here, the total impossibility of coming to any terms of peace with the South, based on their independence. Before that can be they or we must be thoroughly beaten. You can’t be expected to see too, what seems plain to me, that you English would give us no end of trouble if we attempt a piecemeal existence. We must be strong enough to keep any Old-World power at bay. Then we shall behave pretty well, on the whole; surely so when the North is dominant and is fairly treated. “Seizing on Canada.” What do we want of Canada? When the South was aggressive and making slave States we often looked to the peaceful acquisition of Canada as desirable, as a counterpoise. But when we had “changed all that,”—and it is changed, and slavery limited, past all doubt, however the combat ends,—we no longer have use or need of Canada. If we get set up again, we have work enough at home, and our hands full for years; we shall be strong for defense, but weak for aggression. The ill-feeling to England will die out when we are well able to defend ourselves and our home interests.

It does seem that all England wishes us to be weak and divided; perhaps that is good national policy. But the more that is so, the more necessary it is for us to vindicate our integrity, at whatever cost. Let us have it out now, even at the cost of ten times what it has cost so far.

I never thought anything of American institutions for England. Aristocracy is a natural and needful appendage to monarchy. You work out your own type, and you will liberalize fast enough, and leave us to do ours. We’ll make it do, with some jangling.

I wish we could be shut up, like the Japanese of old, for ten or twenty years, only with a weekly mail from you and Dr. Hooker. Well, well!

Ever yours cordially,
Asa Gray.

November 24.

About Max Müller; surely you can’t wonder that the attempt to account for the “first origin of language,” or of anything else, should be the “least satisfactory.”

The use that I fancied could be made of Max Müller’s book, or rather of the history of language, is something more than illustration, but only a little more; that is, you may point to analogies of development and diversification of language, of no value at all in evidence in support of your theory, but good and pertinent as rebutting objections urged against it.

Bishop Colenso’s book will make a noise in England; indeed, I have only read the notice in the “Athenæum.”

You detest the spirit of the “Times” quoad U. S. The “Athenæum” is just as bad in its little penny-trumpet way, every chance it can get, from the first. Can you be much surprised that we return dislike with interest? But we are pleased to find there are sensible and fair writers, such as Cairnes and Mill.

No, dear Darwin, we don’t scorn your joining in the prayer that we daily offer that “God would help our poor country,” and I know and appreciate your honest and right feeling.

I see also, from the English papers I read, how you must picture us as in the extreme of turmoil and confusion and chaos. But if you were here, you would open your eyes to see everything going on quietly, hopefully, and comfortably as possible. I suppose we do not appreciate our miseries. We accept our misfortunes and adversities, but mean to retrieve them, and would sink all that we have before giving up. We work hard, and persevere, and expect to come out all right, to lay the foundations of a better future, no matter if they be laid in suffering. That will not hurt us now, and may bring great good hereafter.

I never saw, and have scarcely heard of, Miss Cooper’s book you ask after. She is the daughter of the late J. Fenimore Cooper, the novelist. The village she describes must be Cooperstown, New York, in the county adjacent to that in which I was brought up,—a region which, every time I visit it, I say it is the fairest of lands, and the people the happiest.

Oh, as to the weeds; Mrs. Gray says she allows that our weeds give up to yours. Ours are modest, woodland, retiring things, and no match for the intrusive, pretentious, self-asserting foreigners. But I send you seeds of one native weed which, corrupted by bad company, is as nasty and troublesome as any I know, namely, Sicyos angulatus; also of a more genteel Cucurbitacea, Echinocystis lobata (the larger seeds). Upon these, especially upon the first, I made my observation of tendrils coiling to the touch. Put the seeds directly into the ground; they will come up in spring, in moist garden soil.

My observations were made on a warm, sunny day. I doubt if you have warmth and sunshine enough in England to get up a sensible movement.

My note about them is in “Proceedings of the American Academy,” iv., p. 98, reprinted in “Silliman’s Journal,” March, 1859, p. 277. I must own that upon casually taking them up since, I never have obtained such very good results as upon two days of August, 1858.

Upon gourds affecting each other’s fruits, I have made no observations at all. I have only referred to that, as a well-known thing, at least, of common repute here, and then referred to maize, where the soft sweet-corn, when fertilized by hard yellow-corn, the grain so fertilized takes the character of the fertilizer. My note about it is in Academy “Proceedings,” vol. iv., I think. You have the volumes (which I have not in reach now), and can find it by the index. It does not amount to much. Nothing on maize I know of except Bonafous’ folio volume. I am going to get and send you grains of four or five sorts of maize. About the involucrate form, I wrote in my last.

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

Cambridge, 14th October, 1862.

Dear Engelmann,—Never mind turmoil. It will come out right. I go against the abolition wing, but support the President in his Proclamation.

If the rebels continue obstinate, that is only a question of time. Of that, as a military measure, and of the expediency, the President of the United States is the sole judge, and in time of war he is to be supported heartily. I myself do not see clearly that the time had come. But I have a notion that the President knows better than I.

As you like Judge Parker, I will send you an article written before the Proclamation came out. You will like it, all but the last part, the bitter end. I would continue the war, if necessary, to the sweeping of all rebeldom bare. And that appears to be the sober sentiment of the country.

If Judge Parker, etc., had let their convention alone, we would have ousted Sumner for a wiser man. But now I fear that Sumner will be returned to the Senate.

You had better in Missouri abolish slavery and take United States bonds in indemnity. You will never do better.

TO CHARLES WRIGHT.

October 13, 1862.

Both Torrey and Eaton speak of having your photograph. You cut me, I suppose, because I am such a poor correspondent! I am afraid I deserve it, but what can a poor fellow do in such times as these?...

A fruit, one of a dozen ripened here this season in the Garden, has such a tropical look and taste that it reminded me of you. It is Asimina triloba! Tastes like a rich custard into which a piece of scented soap has fallen....

General Stuart with his cavalry has been cutting all round McClellan’s army again. Next time, I expect they will make a circuit as far round as Boston, or at least Connecticut, and carry off the horses. They are more in earnest than we are; but we shall use them up at length.

November 14.

Here I was this afternoon, moiling over your plants, copying out Grisebach’s manuscripts for the printer (for the printer won’t touch the Dutchy-looking thing; and besides, I have additions to make, etc.), when I just happened to remember that to-morrow is Havana mail, and that I was by all means to write to you to-day. There is still time, so here goes.

First, can’t you make some arrangement, while you are at this end of Cuba, to receive a Yankee newspaper by mail; say to the address of Don José Blain, or some Havana address. If you can arrange it that it is not stopped, I will send you papers regularly; say the little “Boston Herald,” small, soon read, democratic, patriotic, or others, from time to time....

As to collecting still, I should say, Yes, go on, in a gradual and cheap way, i. e., do not make very heavy outlays, as long as you are in the country; at least till next summer. For we cannot get the war done until late next spring (except in Texas).

If you can do as much for western as for eastern Cuba, it will be a good thing....

Meanwhile I have money enough for you, if you can only get it....

But how can you get it at present rates? Or how can I get it to you? If greenbacks would pass there as here, it would be easy enough.

Is there not some Yankee product that I could ship to you that Blain or Lescaille wants, sewing-machines, agricultural implements, chairs? So we might save the loss on exchange. I will send you anything, from a mouse-trap to a wheelbarrow!

You have a letter from me which must have reached you soon after yours of October 25, saying that my last was eighty-five days old! Indeed, you ought to have had it then....

TO CHARLES DARWIN.

January 27, 1863.

I have been far too busy to write letters; have been interrupted, too, by visitors, etc....

You “wish to heaven the North did not hate us so.” We equally wish the English did not hate us so. Perhaps we exaggerate the ill will in England against us. You certainly over-estimate that of the United States against England, which an influential part of your press exaggerates and incites for the worst purposes. But, after all, after the first flurry, we think and say very little about you, and shall live in peace with you, if you will let us. There should have been, and might have been, the most thorough good will between us. I do not think it is all our fault that it is not so.

In reply to your question:—

If oak and beech had large, colored corolla, etc., I know of no reason why it would be reckoned a low form, but the contrary, quite. But we have no basis for high or low in any class, say, dicotyledons, except perfection of development or the contrary in the floral organs, and even the envelopes; and as we know these may be reduced to any degree in any order or group, we have really, that I know of, no philosophical basis for high and low. Moreover, the vegetable kingdom does not culminate, as the animal kingdom does. It is not a kingdom, but a commonwealth; a democracy, and therefore puzzling and unaccountable from the former point of view.

I have just read De Candolle’s paper on oaks and species, and origin. Well, he has got on about as far towards you as I have. It is clear enough that, as I thought at first, derivation of species is to be the word, and natural selection admitted. The only question is, whether this is enough.

Ever your attached friend,
A. Gray.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

Cambridge, February 16, 1863.

I am disposed to join issue with you on the question of Linnæus’ definition of species. I have long pondered your discussion of the subject in “Géographie Botanique,” and still think, on the supposition of the fixity of species (which Linnæus of course had in view), that between “community of descent” and “likeness,” the former and not the latter is the fundamental conception in the idea of species. We may test this by inquiring whether of the two can be derived from the other. The likeness, I suppose, is the consequence of the community of descent. But, then, as the likeness is a thing of degrees, and, according to present probabilities, species may have only a relative and temporary fixity, your view will after all have the advantage; and the question of species will come to be metaphysical or logical, rather than natural-historical. The worst of all is that there will remain no objective basis or standard; and species will be what each naturalist thinks best so to consider!

I am pleased to know that the view of my article on the “Memoirs” is well received by you. Readable articles are very needful, when they can be had, for a journal which, like Silliman’s, cannot exist without popular support. I promised an article of sixteen pages of this character; but I intended to enlarge more at the close upon the genius and influence of your father, and cite your parallel with Linnæus as portrayed by Fabricius. But I found that my pages were filled before I was aware of it, and I had to cut short, much too curtly. It left me with a somehow dissatisfied feeling. All your remarks about the difference between the profound and the prolific botanists, I agree to; and I think that both Linnæus and De Candolle had as much genius as Robert Brown....

Well, as to origin of species, you have now gone just about as far as I have, in Darwinian direction, and both of us have been led step by step by the facts and probabilities, and have not jumped at conclusions.

I shall be curious to see Mme. Royer’s book; Darwin has spoken of her.

Under my hearty congratulations of Darwin for his striking contributions to teleology, there is a vein of petite malice, from my knowing well that he rejects the idea of design, while all the while he is bringing out the neatest illustrations of it!

Did time allow, I should like to write at large upon these enticing topics....

TO W. J. HOOKER.

Cambridge, March 16, 1863.

I received this morning a letter from William Short, announcing to me the death of his lamented father, our excellent friend, Dr. C. W. Short, of Louisville, Kentucky, one of our oldest botanists, and one of the best of men and kindest of friends. He died on the 7th inst., of a typhoid fever, supervening on a severe cold.

I feel the loss very much. Although we never met, he was one of my most valued friends....

He always remembered his former correspondence with you with great interest, and was particularly pleased when, in my letter, I could give him news of you.

His herbarium, upon which he bestowed great pains and considerable expense, is conditionally bequeathed to the Smithsonian Institution.

Our botanical Nestor is Dr. Darlington. A few months since I had a letter from him written in as firm a hand as ever; but now he is prostrated by paralysis, which, however, leaves his mind clear. But he cannot remain much longer with us. Short and Darlington were both hearty and true Christian gentlemen.

April 28, 1863.

Your kind letter of the 6th inst. and the photograph were received with more gratification than I can well express. Both your handwriting and your carte de visite show you to be well and strong, and, please God, long may you so continue.

Your face looks fuller than a dozen years ago, and a bit older, it may be, but it recalls your friendly and kindly expression, and is the best substitute I can have for not seeing you again.

What I wrote of our Nestor, Dr. Darlington, as about to be removed from us, has come to pass. The good old man died, after much suffering from a paralysis, on Wednesday last, the 22d, as a newspaper slip has apprised me. He had reached the age of eighty-one. Unless we continue to rank Dr. Bigelow among the botanists, Dr. Torrey, and even myself, now count among the most advanced in age.

I am most happy to tell you that Dr. Torrey, whom I lately saw in New York, and who last week looked in upon us here for a day, is quite well.

Mrs. Greene is cheerful and busy in carrying out her husband’s bequest and desires, in favor of the Boston Natural History Society, to whom he left his herbarium and botanical library.

By Professor George Bond, a colleague and neighbor of mine, our distinguished astronomer, and a most worthy, amiable, and modest person, whom I hope you may see, I sent out to you a photograph of F. A. Michaux and of Adrien de Jussieu, which I thought you might like, and which I have just had made from daguerreotypes which I induced them to sit for in Paris in 1851. Bond will be delighted to see Kew again with its vast improvements.

Ever, dear Sir William, yours affectionately,

Asa Gray.

TO MRS. THOMAS P. JAMES.

Cambridge, April 30, 1863.

I had sent some while ago word to Miss Morris that I had a single seedling Darlingtonia, and should like to know if Dr. Darlington was in condition to be interested in it. But she thought the time had passed for that.

His memory will long be venerated. We, at least, shall not forget him.

Twenty years ago he had sent to me his selected epitaph, and had discussed it. It is natural and characteristic. I should take an interest in seeing such an inscription on his tombstone. But, entre nous, I should not fancy such an one on my own. I should select rather some simple line of Holy Writ, expressive of the Christian trust and faith, such as our friend died in.

I had lately been writing brief notices of several of our botanists, deceased, for the May number of “Silliman’s Journal” (as you see, I mail a copy just received); and at the time I felt that they probably would not be published before there would be another and more distinguished name to add.

I shall not wait for the year to come round, but I hope to draw up a brief tribute to his memory for the July number of “Silliman’s Journal.” So I should be much obliged to you for the dates and other particulars you kindly offer to furnish. I hope that autobiography which you are so fortunate as to possess is of such a character that it may be printed, and that you will give it along with a little memoir from your own pen. It will be quite in your way, and I would rather you should do it than any one else....

By the way, I may as well mention that Dr. Darlington told me that certain letters, etc., of Baldwin’s, which he could not print, as they were severe on Nuttall, should come into my possession after his own death. You will probably know if any bundle of papers is left, directed to my charge.

TO CHARLES DARWIN.

Cambridge, March 22, 1863.

My dear Darwin,—Argyle’s article on the Supernatural, to which you called my attention a long while ago, I never happened to see till to-day, when I have read it through. It is quite clever, not deep, but clear, and I think useful. I see no occasion for finding fault with him, except in his attempts now and then to direct a little odium against you, which is unhandsome, for his main points are those I hammered out in the “Atlantic,” etc.; indeed I see signs of his having read the same. But it is hardly fair of him, after expressing his complete conviction that where the operation of natural causes can be clearly traced, the implication of design, upon its appropriate evidence, is not thereby rendered less certain or less convincing, to go on to speak of derivation-doctrine in a way that implies the contrary.

Of course we believers in real design make the most of your “frank” and natural terms, “contrivance, purpose,” etc., and pooh-pooh your endeavors to resolve such contrivances into necessary results of certain physical processes, and make fun of the race between long noses and long nectaries!

March 23.

Dr. Wyman, who is a sharp fellow, tells me that, on the authority of the historian Prescott, the Incas of Peru, for no one knows how long, married their sisters, to keep the perfect purity of the blood. Query: How did this strong case of close-breeding operate? Did they run out thereby? Wyman thinks there is no evidence of it.

If it is true, and the Incas stood it for a long course of generations, you must look to it, for it will bear hard against your theory of the necessity of crossing. If they run out, you will have a good case.

April 11.

You see that, at length, the thing is nearly done, and, to use the expression here, rebeldom is “gone up.”

You have long seen, I suppose, that I was right in saying there was but one possible end to the war; also that the continuance for a time or abolition of slavery depended simply on the rebels,—that if they obstinately and persistently resisted, slavery was thereby doomed.

It has been a long, weary, and trying work. But the country has had the needed patience and nerve, and the thing is done, once for all, at great cost, but to immense and enduring advantage.

You are the only Britisher I ever write to on this subject, and, in fact, for whose opinions about our country I care at all.

So I hasten to rejoice with you over the beginning of the end.

April 20.

You asked me to tell you, when I had read it, what I thought of Sir Charles Lyell’s book. I have only to-day finished the perusal of the copy he kindly sent me, that is, all but half of the matter on glacial period, which I reserve till I can read it more attentively. Throughout it is a very interesting and to me a very satisfactory book. It is three books: 1. A capital résumé and examination of what we knew about the evidence of antiquity of man; no evidence we had not read of before, but very clearly presented, of course.

2. A treatise on the glacial period. Out of this I have much to learn, and must read it all again carefully; of a part I have not yet cut the leaves.

3. On transmutation matters. That part of the book I can judge somewhat of, and I declare it first-rate. It is just about what I expected, and is characteristic of the man. I think that you, and Hooker, are unreasonable in complaining of Lyell that he does not come out “flat-footed,” as we say, as an advocate of natural-selection transmutation. For, 1st, it is evident that though inclined strongly towards it he is by no means satisfied that natural selection will do all the work you put upon it. 2d, he very plainly implies nearly all you would have him say. And, 3d, he serves your cause (supposing it to be well-founded) quite as effectually, perhaps, by his guarded position, by his keeping the position of a judge rather than of an advocate, and by considering still the case as not yet ripe for a decision.

Very skillfully, too, has he presented the case of transmutation so as to commend it, as much as possible, to us orthodox people. (Huxley, I suppose, whose two books I have not seen, would put it in a way to frighten us off.) Indeed, I think he has shown remarkable judgment and taste, and will have much success in disarming prejudice. And this is all you could ask.

The chapter on language makes the points I supposed would be made, or some of them, but only dips in, leaving more to be said. But this is rather ticklish ground, for, if we are not careful here, you would get the better of us in this field quoad design.

If I had got the book three or four weeks earlier I should have worked in some notice of the last chapter into my review of De Candolle, etc., on Species, in the May number of “Silliman’s Journal.”

Now please do not think of being ill this spring, and passing all your valuable time, wasting it, at a water-cure.

I have really, as you see, nothing special to write of this week, and no time to read what I have hurriedly penned.

May 26.

Your letter on heterogeny is keen and good; Owen’s rejoinder ingenious. But his dissent from your well-put claims of natural selection to attention and regard is good for nothing except on the admission of the view that species are somehow derived genealogically; and this I judge, from various of Owen’s statements, that he really in his heart believes to be the case, and was (as I long ago intimated my suspicions) hunting about for some system of derivation, when your book came down upon him like a thunderclap.

Wyman, here, is greatly pleased with Huxley’s book on man’s place in nature. I have not even seen it.

Did you ever notice how prettily Iris is arranged for cross-fertilizing by bees, etc.?

Your Linum paper has long been here. But I have actually not had time to read it. I might have glanced at it. But I find it best to read only when I can do so with some attention.

Phyllotaxis: I have no notion in the world why the angular divergences should be of that series of numbers and not of others. Opposite leaves give (decussating) the angles. My puzzle has been to account for this system in cycles in leaves running into the system of decussating whorls in flowers (usually, almost universally). You will see the question by comparing in my “Botanical Text-Book” (not “Lessons”), pp. 236, 237, with chapter v., section 1; and you see I have drawn an illustration from it apropos to Falconer’s remark. But explaining the obscure by the obscure does not amount to much.

As to national affairs, how quarrelsome you English are. Here are we, cool and quietly occupied with our little affairs, never dreaming of harm from you, and your people are trying their prettiest to pick a quarrel with us, because we do what Historicus says the English have always done and will do again when the time comes, having Lord Stowell to back them! Tell me, who is Historicus in the “Times”? An able and most influential person evidently.

The government of England is now showing sense. Do not wonder that some wild talk is given to the air in this rough country, after what you have heard in the House of Commons, and read in the “Times,” etc. Am afraid we shall not like each other for a good while—the nations. But all shows I was right. We must carry out our little job, and hold the United States complete and develop material strength at any cost, or we could not live without eating more dirt than we like.

Boasting nonsense is pretty well knocked out of us by severe discipline and sad reverses, but the determination is stronger than ever.

Time up and paper full. Forgive my maundering, and believe me to be,

Ever your affectionate,
A. Gray.

June, [1863].

I am kept distractingly busy, so look for nothing of any use from me yet awhile.

Your Ohio case of law against marrying of cousins, I put to my neighbor, Professor Parsons, who had it looked up. He tells me there is no such law at all on the Ohio statute books, nor is there a trace of any law on the subject to be found in the laws of any State in the United States. He doubts if there can really be any statistics which tell on the point, because, first, the marriage of first cousins is a rare thing in this country; second, the United States decennial censuses do not afford any information on the matter; third, nor any of the [state] censuses that he knows of.

Pray, don’t run mad over Phyllotaxis! I can’t save you, I am sure.

George’s “Converging Sines” is the same, perhaps, as what Bravais was after. His memoir may help you (see “Botanical Text-Book,” p. 141, par. 248); or, if you want something thoroughly mathematical, consult Neumann, of Berlin, in some paper, which I have no reference to....

I am sorry you do not give a better account of yourself. Be careful and do not work too hard.

July 7.

My last from you is May 31.

I had arranged to reprint most of Bates on Mimetic Analogy in “Silliman’s Journal,” but my long review of A. de Candolle crowded it out. I then thought of a brief abstract, but have had no time to prepare it. I wrote remarks and arranged long extracts of your Linum paper, and insisted on it for the July number of “Silliman’s Journal.” But it, too, was laid over, not for anything I had, for I have little in the July number.

I like and agree to your remark that, in Bates’s Geographical Varieties, etc., we get about as near to seeing a species made as we are ever likely to get; and so believing, I think your gradual way more likely than Heer’s jumps.

Apropos to Heer, you ask me if it is not impossible to imagine so many and nice coadaptations as we see in orchids being formed all by a chance blow.

I reply, Yes, perfectly impossible to imagine (and much the same by any number of chance blows).

So I turn the question back upon you. Is not the fact that the coadaptations are so nice next to a demonstration against their having been formed by chance blows at all, one or many?

Here lies, I suppose, the difference between us. When you bring me up to this point, I feel the cold chill.

I have been doing nothing but attend to my daily work, and had got so fagged that I really thought I was about to have softening of the brain, or some other breakdown. But a week of respite, caused by the death of an aged relative of my wife’s,—a dear old soul,—taking us away from here perforce, has set me up very nearly, and now after a week more comes my vacation, and we are off into the quiet country for three weeks.

A little legacy of about £2,000 to my wife comes in opportunely to relieve us of anxiety for the future. We have no children (which I regret only that I have no son to send to the war), and this with a little income, rather precarious, of about £200 a year would support us in our very simple way, if I were to throw up my place here. But I cannot do that yet....

Look at Impatiens flowers; see if the most fertile “precociously fertilized” ones ever get crossed!

I have asked in three directions for seeds of the Specularia perfoliata. Inclosed are depauperate specimens.

It is pretty to see honey-bees cross-fertilize Locust (Robinia), much as you say of broom. One of my students has been noticing the way bees act on Kalmia.

Now for my best thing for to-day.

An orchid which I missed last year, Platanthera flava, I knew would be curious, for I remembered a strong protuberance on base of labellum, on the median line. I have not time left to describe it now, having been sadly interrupted, but it is pretty,—equal to anything you have yet seen in British orchids. The process turns proboscis of insect either to right or left, where it will slip into an imperfect ring (as seen from above) or deep groove (as seen from before), in which lies the disk, not flat but coiled up, ready to catch proboscis. It is like the eye of a needle to receive the thread.

Perhaps I will send you, or print, a sketch of the thing.

I am waiting for Gymnadenia tridentata to come on.

But the post hour has come.

July 21.

Your latest is of the 26th ult. You need not worry! It never wearies nor bores me to write to you, in the off-hand way I do. I enjoy our correspondence too much to consent to curtail or interrupt it. I learn from you, here in this remote part of the world, a thousand things which I should not otherwise know at all. And you stimulate my mind far more than any one else, except, perhaps, Hooker. So please do not make a fuss, but let me go on in my own fashion, and send me your fresh and stimulating letters, whenever you are in the mood of it. I am now in my vacation, and already, having idled and dawdled a week or two, I am as well and hearty as possible, and in the best of spirits. We should leave home this week for three weeks’ run in the country, but the sickness of my wife’s nephew, Lieutenant Jackson of Massachusetts Cavalry, will keep us awhile, as, though not alarming, it might take a bad turn, and so I may not be in the country for a week or two yet. We shall see....

I have strong and fresh Drosera rotundifolia, and it will now turn in its bristles and stick the viscid gland fast to a fly, binding him fast on all sides with liliputian cords. But it is awfully slow about it,—say three or four hours, and the next day the leaf sometimes becomes involute and folds over or curves around the insect; but what good? If the fly is not stuck fast in alighting, no movement takes place to hold him till he has got away if he ever could. However, it is an indication of what is so effectually done in Dionæa.

Rotary movement of end of tendril-bearing stems is common, is it not, and well-known?

Any notes you will give me to print in “Silliman’s Journal,” I shall always delight in.

I have been reading Owen’s Aye-aye paper. Well, this is rich and cool! Did I not tell you in the “Atlantic,” long ago, that Owen had a transmutation theory of his own! It is your Hamlet, with the part of Hamlet left out! But as you say now, you don’t so much insist on natural selection, if you can only have derivation of species. And Owen goes in for derivation on the largest scale. You may as well lovingly embrace! Oh, it is rare fun!...

I have been so far disappointed in getting no Gymnadenia tridentata. But I still hope for it. I must have it, indeed.

Boott’s address is good, chiefly very good. But he speaks of Wyman’s paper without having duly considered it. Wyman’s experiments are better than Pasteur’s, and the results opposite!

P. S.—Papers just in, or rather telegrams, that you in London were daily awaiting and expecting the capture of Washington, etc., and speculating as to whether Jeff Davis’s envoys from Washington might not be received at London as a fait accompli. A good deal of little-concealed joy, etc.

Oh, foolish people! When will you see that there is only one end to all this, and that the North never dreams of any other,—the complete putting down of the rebellion. And since 1863 began, it was clear that it would be attended with the annihilation of slavery.

Time was when we should have highly valued English appreciation of the right cause. We have long ceased to care or think about it.

We only wish you had the city of New York. But the sympathizers with secession and riot there have done their worst, and lost their game. The city of New York is the only part of our country which I am ashamed of; and the trouble there is that it is not American.

Enough; good-bye.
A. G.

September 1.

Your fine, long letter of August 4th reached me up in the country, in my native region, in the centre of the State of New York, rusticating and enjoying ourselves mightily. We were among the people of a thriving region; a well-to-do set; no poverty near us for miles and miles, i. e., no hardship, except any that a drunken laborer might bring on his family; and I longed to take you out with us in our drives, that you might see a happy and comfortable country, more and more so every year, and perhaps a larger ratio of the population refined to a reasonable degree in feeling and life than I know of in any other part of the world.

I will consider about fantastic variation of pigeons. I see afar trouble enough ahead quoad design in nature, but have managed to keep off the chilliness by giving the knotty questions a rather wide berth. If I rather avoid, I cannot ignore the difficulties ahead. But if I adopt your view bodily, can you promise me any less difficulties?

If your Lythrum paper shall be at all equal in interest to that on Linum, it will be a gem.

As to tendrils, what are Hooker and Oliver (the latter a professor, too) about, and where have they lived not to know anything of them? Everybody must have seen, in Cucurbitaceæ and Passiflora, tendrils reaching out straight for a certain time, and then, if they reach nothing, coiling up from the end. Also the sweeping of stems....

P. S. [To the above?] Three numbers of Boston newspapers recently sent you, two by this mail (in which my good beau-père is again “spiking the English”), please to forward to Reuben Harvey, Esq., Limerick, Ireland.

You are quite out in supposing that hatred of England is increasing, or that there is the least desire to meddle with you, except in self-defense.

My own feelings were very sensitive at first, because I expected better things, and I then deferred much to British opinion. I now do neither, and nothing strikes me more than the smallness of mind and largeness of gullibility of the British people, as far as I can judge from their press (weeklies, quarterlies, and “Times”). But I do not suppose you will fight us because you dislike us; and so conversely. I suppose I do not see the papers which so abuse England, though I read influential and respectable papers; but from what I do see, I think we receive far more abuse and misrepresentation and unfair usage than we give.

As to the course of the war and policy of our country as to slavery, some day when you turn back to some early letter of mine you will see that I was a fairly good prophet; that the South might have delayed the abolition of slavery by giving up early in the conflict, but that every month of continued resistance hastened and insured the downfall of slavery. That is now doomed, and sure near to rapid death; quick in some places, slower in others, but sure.

Ill-usage of negroes—who make such good soldiers—will soon be unheard of, except with Irish. It will take some generations of American life to breed out the barbarian they bring to the country.

November 23.

The next best thing, of late, is the exposé of Lindsay and George Saunders (the Confederates) by Historicus.

I trust Historicus’ previous letters, in which he shows (about the same time my father-in-law’s articles on the subject reached England) that it is the duty of a country to see that armed or war vessels are not fitted out, quite irrespective of all municipal law, have produced their proper effect. Something has produced a great effect, and a great change in the idea of what it was incumbent on the government to do; and nothing can be more satisfactory than the views now taken; and the effect here is excellent. For we are sure that when the right notions once get a lodgment, as they have, England will faithfully carry them through. Lawyers whom I knew here were confident how the law would ultimately be laid down by your courts; but we greatly feared it would be done only after a few more such vessels had got to sea. All will go well now.

The newspaper I occasionally send you is a fair specimen of the influential part of the press here. Such articles as the “Times” likes to cite have far less effect here than you suppose in the determination of events.

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

Cambridge, December 11, 1863.

My dear Engelmann,—Our good old friend Von Martius writes me that on the 30th March next, he will reach his fiftieth anniversary of his doctorate. I dare say his friends will commemorate it in Germany. It occurs to me that it would be a good idea for some of us, his friends and correspondents, to compliment him upon the occasion. Suppose you draw up in German a letter of congratulation, etc., to be signed by yourself, Torrey, Sullivant, etc., and forward about the proper time. Send me, with your German circular letter to Martius, a translation in English....

Yes, I will let you work at botany when I guard you. Your botanical work is far better than your politics. But you must swear the President’s oath, Proclamation and all!!

Martius is not a very remarkable botanist, but good; is a genial, philosophical soul (full of Plato, etc.), a good explorer, has worked up the Palms, etc., well, and is a wonderful man for the amount he knows on a vast number of different subjects,—philology, antiquities, philosophy, et id genus omne.

May 3, [1864].

... Spring is opening here, but late. From this to July 10, I am engaged in college every day in the week. Also am watching the herbarium building go up, the brick walls of which, if good weather, may be all up this week, and the roof put on next week.

Your circular letter to good Martius was very good, especially in its original German. Thanks....

Never mind if “Sagittaria graminea, Michaux,” is applicable to only one form. You had best keep the old name, the more so as that you propose, S. simplicifolia, is “not always correct.” We can’t let you change a name because you can improve it. Too many can and would play at that game, and less discreetly than you would, and then cite your example!

If Fendler gets tired of bush-clearing, and will come to me this fall, I will give him $500 a year as curator, lodgings, two rooms in gardener’s house, which I have reserved; and let him have say three days in the week for himself, if he wants them.

The people are determined to support and reëlect their excellent President Lincoln (what a noble letter that last of his), whether Frémont and the like make a coalition with copperheads or not. It is all the same to us. Lincoln will walk the course. God bless him!

Wright is coming home for a few months this summer.

TO CHARLES WRIGHT.

Cambridge, September 18, 1863.

What Don José affirms about coast and mountain vegetation being much the same is curious, unlikely, yet you seem to find it so. That bit of coast with all microphyllous and spiny vegetation is also curious.

I am glad you like him for being an abolitionist. Though not very much of an abolitionist myself, at the start, I hope I can fall in with, and welcome, the ways of Providence, when Providence takes the matter in hand, and say Amen....

Well, you are doing well in botanizing, and should finish up Cuban botany while you are at it. And on your return, you and Grisebach should join teams, and do up Cuban botany in a full memoir. You are right to stay till next spring. You are happy in Cuba; you would not be so here. Things in the United States do not go to suit you at all. “Things is working,” and in the right way,—but the end must be the total suppression of the rebellion,—the exile or punishment of rebel leaders, the return of the masses to their duty, and they will put things straight. Just what is now going on in Tennessee will go on elsewhere, I suppose. I know only one man in Cambridge that you could talk secesh to. We can correspond very well, and keep cool. But if we were together, during the war, we should get into a row at once. It could not be otherwise....

When the Union is restored (which it is to be, of course, when the rebellion is put down) those who do not love us well enough to resume their duties and privileges have only to take themselves off to some country they like better. The United States of America belongs to loyal Americans. After the war the country will prosper wonderfully. And the South will get to be something.

December 1.

Things move on.

“The mills of the Gods grind slow, but they grind exceeding fine.” Wait in Cuba a year longer, and you may return to a country in which slavery, having tried to get more, has lost all, and as a system is defunct, to the lasting benefit of all parties.

You might now revisit your old Texan haunts, under General Banks’s protection.

The November elections show a united North. Peace democracy has made its issue, and is dead. The reëlection of Lincoln by acclamation seems probable, supported by moderate men of all sorts, the extremes of the opposing parties alone going against him....

Merry Christmas to you.

January 21, 1864.

By the steamer of Saturday, which takes this, a good young fellow, Mr. Kennedy, a member of our Senior class, goes to Cuba, to look after business of his father, and, when he can, to botanize, only four or five weeks, that is, in vacation. He is very fond of botany, and bids fair to be a botanist some day, if he does not take to money-making instead....

This war, we think, will be pretty much over next summer; and then, back in the Union, with slavery pretty much nowhere, by the hearty wish of a majority of the people, we may expect a career of prosperity and real advance of the South, such as it has never known. At least we hope so.

TO R. W. CHURCH.

Cambridge, December 25, 1863.

For ourselves, your letter found us here just on the eve of our month’s holiday, a trip to Lake George, and thence to my natal region, in the most beautiful (and the most English-looking) part of the State of New York.... My wife was well enough to do her small part in a great fair held in Boston for the United States Sanitary Commission (which has kept the ladies very busy for the last six months), which has just closed, having brought the net proceeds of about $125,000 (it turns out $140,000) for the relief of suffering.

As to our national affairs, I should like now and then to send you such comments or articles as seem to me to throw most light upon our condition. There is little I could say in a letter. I said very early to English friends that if the rebellion were short it might leave things much as they were before (no desirable state), but if long and obstinate, it would cut the knot we were unable to untie and completely destroy the slave system. You see now it is coming to pass, by rather slow but sure steps, and a great blessing it is to be to the South. To the North the war, with all its sad evils, has been a great good, morally and politically. The end is in the hands of Providence, and we humbly wait for it; but there is very little diversity of opinion here as to what, essentially, the end is to be, that is, the complete territorial reinstatement of the Union, and the abolition of slavery. Very sanguine, you think, in England. We must wait and see, and on our part hope and labor.

Now for a little personal matter. I have long been anxious for the safety and final destination of my herbarium and other botanical collections, which in my house (besides that, there is not room for them) are too liable to destruction from fire. I had offered them, with my botanical library, to our university, if they would build in the Botanic Garden a fireproof building to hold them, and raise a small fund for their support. Recently and quite unexpectedly, a banker in Boston, almost unknown to me personally, has offered in any case to construct the building, and a few friends are taking steps, with good prospects, to raise by gifts a fund of $10,000 for the support of the establishment. When done, I shall feel that my collections, which are most important for North American botany, are secure for the use of future botanists. To secure this I gladly divest myself of the ownership of collections which have absorbed most of my small spare means for the last thirty years, and which are valued at $20,000 or more....

In the council of our American Academy (of which since May last I have been president) we have nominated Dean Milman to the foreign honorary membership vacated by the death of Whately, and Max Müller to that vacated by Grimm. The election has not yet taken place.

Mrs. Gray, with kind regards, joins me in best wishes for the new year to you and yours.

Very sincerely yours,
Asa Gray.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

Cambridge, December 22, 1863.

My dear De Candolle,—I thank you cordially for your letter of the 13th November, and for the copy of Thury’s interesting and curious paper. This I had not seen, neither Pictet’s notice. I find it very interesting, but I do not see how he got a legitimate deduction from the facts given by Knight in the vegetable kingdom to his principle in the animal kingdom. However, that is of small moment if the principle holds. The subject is one which will naturally attract much attention, and which, as you remark, has philosophical bearings. I mean to bring it up, next week, for discussion at our private (social) scientific club in Cambridge.

I thank you also for the good spirit in which you take, as I meant them, my criticisms upon your article on Species, etc. There is no progress to be made upon such interesting subjects without free criticism, because without it we cannot perfectly clear up our own views nor impart them perfectly to others. And especially, since I have so often to criticise the views or writings of persons for whom I have no particular regard, it is pleasant, if only for the sake of impartiality, to criticise those for whom you have the greatest regard and respect. So I particularly like it when I can criticise such a near friend as J. D. Hooker or Bentham, and I believe they like it, too, at least Hooker, who is himself a very free critic. Of course, I know very well that you will be likely to turn all the points I made. The question upon which of the two foundations the idea of species rests, I well know is not to be settled off-hand by any bit of argument. Pray take up the cudgels against me whenever an occasion offers.

As to theoretical views, you and I receive and use them as means, not as ends, and expect to change many of them from time to time. Such especially as relate to origins and causes are the questions which we ask, rather than answers that we receive; and we put our questions variously according to the leadings of the case at the time. But this is all commonplace and trite.

It is curious to see that Owen, in his Aye-aye paper, has come to adopt Heer’s views essentially, of course without the slightest allusion to Heer.

Our civil war goes on slowly, but very surely, toward the destruction of negro slavery; and with all its great cost, we may hope for future benefit in proportion. By the time we have nearly ended our war, it may be that Europe will have its turn again. I hope not.

A. Gray.

TO JAMES D. DANA.

Cambridge, January 20, [1864].

My dear Dana,—Perhaps you may not know, and I hope you may be as pleased as I was to know, that your article of last summer on Geological Periods is reprinted in full in the “Reader” (of London), with an appreciative prefix.

Cephalization goes on bravely in your very taking article which you have just sent me. I am much struck with it.

In one thing you zoölogists miss it, I think,—in following French customs in dropping the Latin, the vernacular of science, in names. I wish you would write Aphaniptera, etc., which is just as much English after all as Aphanipters, and good for all languages.

Have Englishified contractions for all such names if you will; it is well. But in proposing and formally writing of such divisions, etc., pray use the scientific form.

The other course has greatly jargonified zoölogy.

In botany we have always been more dignified. Moreover I detest “larve,” though Kirby tried to introduce the word. “Larva” has got to be as English as “phenomenon.”

But I dare say most would agree with you.

I like the ring of most of the new technical terms you have coined....

Ever yours,
A. Gray.

TO CHARLES DARWIN.

February 16, 1864.

My dear Darwin,—Here we are past midwinter, and not being stimulated as of old by your exciting letters, I have not written you a line since Christmas. Not that I have had anything in particular to tell you. I write now to say how very sorry I am that the word or two I get about you from Hooker gives me the idea that you are having an uncomfortable and suffering time, as well as entirely broken off from scientific work. I feel very sorry about it, and do long for better news of you....

I have lately printed a couple of monographs, one pretty big one, of American Astragali. I do not know that they contain anything you would care to see. Yet I think I shall send you a copy presently, through Hooker.

I feel much the loss of dear old Boott, so good, so true a friend, and he was always writing me little notes telling me of all that was going on.

The sentiment of our country, you must see, at least I assure you, has settled, as I knew it would if the rebellion was obstinate enough, into a determination to do away with slavery. Homely, honest, ungainly Lincoln is the representative man of the country.

A Boston gentleman, at cost of $11,000 or more, is to build a fireproof house for my herbarium, which I give to the university, with my botanical library. A fund of $12,000 is raising to support it, which will relieve me of the expenditure of about $500 a year. But I shall have double care and bother all the coming spring and summer.

Dr. Scudder has gone to Cuba, to attend an invalid, and wishes to examine orchid fertilization, and asks me what in particular he should look at.

Pray get well, dear Darwin, and believe me to be ever,

Yours cordially,
Asa Gray.

TO R. W. CHURCH.

Cambridge, April 4, 1864.

My dear Mr. Church,—If you have long ago written your American correspondent off your books, as being a right shabby fellow, he could not complain.

Here is your agreeable letter of January 19th, a most prompt and more than kind response to mine of Christmas, still unacknowledged by me!

The fact simply is that I have been delaying week by week in the hope of being able to announce to you that the subscription for the support of our botanical establishment was filled up. I am sorry to say that this cannot yet be said. The matter has been privately conducted, that is, nothing said about it in the public prints; but the two gentlemen who took the matter in hand have quietly circulated the paper among their well-to-do acquaintances in Boston, not beginning till late in January, under the idea that the fair for the Sanitary Commission had perhaps exhausted their friends’ purses. Since then, far greater and more pressing demands have been made upon the benevolent and the public-spirited, for a variety of good objects; and our affair has gone slowly in consequence.

I have not heard for a week respecting it, but a week ago the sum subscribed was a little less than seven thousand dollars, the greater part in sums of $500 each. The $10,000 is obviously secure, for subscribers of $100 each, yet to be appealed to, may be relied on for a good part of the lacking sum. But it begins to be clearly seen that $12,000 are needed for the capital of the fund, and this, at the present rate, it will take some time to secure.

Your own offer of a small subscription, I can truly say, not only gratified me in the highest degree, as an expression of an interest in our affair which I had no reason to expect, but has already been of use,—has really been as good for us as any contribution you ought to make. For I took the liberty to read that portion of your letter to three or four friends, and their interest in the matter was sensibly quickened and exalted by this evidence of the lively interest in the matter taken by a country parson, far away in England! So pray consider that you have already helped us on, and we are truly grateful to you for your generous proffer. There is, indeed, a strong temptation to accept your kind offer in the fact that, in the present state of exchanges, owing to our paper currency not on a specie basis (one of the sad consequences of our civil war), every pound sterling in England, in normal times worth only from $4.90 to $5.00, is worth nearly or quite $8.00, so that a contribution of £5 sterling really now counts here for about forty dollars!! So you see how hard it is for me to discourage your kind intentions. But I really feel that the sum which I specified, as the condition of my own gift to our university, is really quite sure, though slower in coming than we had hoped.

As to the building for the herbarium, I have only to state it goes on famously. It is considerably enlarged in plan from what was at first contemplated, and a favorable early spring has allowed of more progress than could have been expected at this season.

The generous donor of the building not only adopted at once the larger plans as soon as suggested, but himself proposed improvements and additions.

The building, the foundations of which are already laid, in the most substantial manner, is 32 by 57 feet, and is connected with my private study in the house I reside in by a neat conservatory 18 feet long, which takes the place of the simple wooden corridor at first intended. The whole will cost Mr. Thayer, the donor, by the contracts, more than $11,000, and is likely, by extras, to reach the round sum of $12,000. And all will be done before the summer is over, we trust.

See how the expression of your interest to me has led me on, to the neglect of everything else I want to write about.... I wish to say something about the troubles in your Old World, which, with all its age and wisdom, falls into “difficulties” hardly less grave than ours. I hope poor brave Denmark will not be crushed out of existence. There are English questions which we regard with much attention, ecclesiastical and social questions, on which I would fain know what you think. But I cannot write longer now.

Only as to our war, I beg you to believe that we (the earnest thoughtful people and most around us, according to their measure) have acted and are acting from the highest sense of duty,—duty to our beloved country and to humanity; and we keep the full conviction that great and permanent good is to result. Much of the good we see already, and more comes near to realization every day. So we work and trust, and suffer cheerfully. We only wish our views and motives were better appreciated in general in the country and by the people whose good opinion we most value. But even the lack of that appreciation, which is far from universal, is likely to do us good. I am always sure of your thoughtful good wishes for us. But I must break off.

Ever yours most sincerely,
Asa Gray.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

Cambridge, May 30, 1864.

My dear De Candolle,—I have let your very kind letter of 28th January lie on my desk a long time, always expecting to write soon, but, having been extremely busy with various administrative matters and college work since it reached me, the convenient moment for writing to you has not arrived till now. I inclose a note to my young friend and late colleague, Professor Eliot, which I beg you to send to the poste restante on arrival. I learn from his friends here that he may be expected to be in Geneva about the time this reaches you.

In my note I ask him to call upon you, as a friend of mine. He will of course be unwilling to make any demands upon your time or attention. But I should like him to see you, and perhaps he might through you pay his respects to the savans in his line, notably to De la Rive. Having wife, etc., with him, and little time, his visit will be transient. Eliot is a chemist and physicist, a man of much promise, we think, and a most gentlemanly man. He is a very trusty friend of mine. He has passed the autumn and winter in Paris, studying hard, and will soon return here, bringing the latest news of you. He and his lady companions are just such people as we should like you to know America by.

I should say to you, moreover, that I gave to another colleague of mine, Professor Cooke, a note to you. He is a chemist and mineralogist, is full of research and zeal, a most estimable man.

You know, perhaps, that I have made over (or am to make over) all my herbarium and library to our university, in consideration of a fireproof building made to receive them, and a fund, of moderate extent, raised for the permanent support.... During the summer or early autumn, my collections will be transferred to this their permanent home, to my great relief.

It is probable that I shall continue to spend upon these collections all my available means, and I hope they will be of use in the future, as well as safe, which they are not in my wooden house. My own donation is reckoned in money value at about $20,000.

Charles Wright is expected home from Cuba soon, when there will be a new and interesting distribution of his phænogamous plants.

We trust that our civil war is in its last year, that is, if we are victorious, as we hope to be. In that case your American stocks will be all right again. Nearly all the little I possess is cheerfully put into United States government stocks, where I am well content it should be.

Small countries, which you prefer, would do very well if all were small, but the few large, like England and France, will domineer unpleasantly over the smaller. Just look now at poor Denmark, which has the misfortune to be small, and so is made to suffer! All Scandinavia had best combine, and build up a strong nation. Natural selection is hard upon the weak! However it may be in Europe, you must excuse us for endeavoring to prevent, while we may, even at great cost, the establishment of a European system on this side of the Atlantic; so we must not fail to put down the Confederacy. We shall, after that, in a quiet way, make the French emperor very uncomfortable in Mexico; but we hope that country may yet be a strong power, but not a French power.

Enough of politics! And believe me to be, with affectionate regard,

Ever yours,
Asa Gray.

Cambridge, January 30, 1865.

My dear De Candolle: ... This very day, I have received your envoi by post of the neat little article on leaves of Fagus, which I had seen in English dress, and the copy of Heer’s address. Many thanks to you. I have received also, and thank you much for it, the “Prodromus,” XIV., I. I have this evening read over Heer’s address. It is, as you say, capital. It interests me in its proof of the antiquity of the present flora; and I admit that he very neatly puts the case between his view of the production of our species out of the older ones, and that of Darwin. Here it still rests: Darwin has the great advantage of

being able to assign a vera causa. Heer has the disadvantage of having no known cause to assign; but he shows that things do not appear to have proceeded as Darwin’s theory requires. It does seem as if there were times of peculiar change as well as of great stability. But were this time of change and that of stability simultaneous for the species of a flora? And does Heer allow enough for the species which now occur under many forms,—show great polymorphism. I continually meet with these in the North American flora; in which the dying out of some forms, and their replacing by others, which may well take place in time, would, in effect, just give a change like that to be accounted for. But I cannot say that these varieties come in insensibly, very likely not.

Now, to speak of myself. My summer was much frittered away; the superintending of the new building for my herbarium just preventing any serious study. The autumn was devoted to the removal and rearrangement of plants and books, and to assisting Charles Wright in the collation and distribution into sets of his collections in Cuba for the last three years past; very full and interesting collections, and requiring much care and labor, on account of this distribution being a continuation of former distributions. I laid out into the sets every specimen with my own hands, Mr. Wright adding the tickets and numbers. It was an immense labor, and was finished only at the close of the last day of the year....

I mean to prepare for “Silliman’s Journal” a brief and simple notice of the edifice for my herbarium, so I will not speak further of it here; further than to say that I am well satisfied, only I sadly need a curator!

And now, I turn to your letter of September 29, and ask your pardon for having so long neglected it. Your letters, your reflections upon social and political, as well as upon scientific questions, are always very interesting and instructive to me. I regret that I can render so little return in kind....

As to our national troubles, the prospect brightens that we shall end the rebellion and slavery before long. God grant it.

Believe me to be, as ever, my dear De Candolle, very faithfully yours,

A. Gray.

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

February 14, 1865.

... Wright is here, distributing and finishing up his North Pacific Expedition Collection; ... will return to Cuba in a month or two, to take a year or two more there, revisit some old parts and explore some new; then I urge Hayti, but Wright seems rather loth.

Rothrock—from northwestern Pennsylvania—is a bright lively pupil of mine for last three or four years, when not serving his country in the army, where he has done good service as private in infantry, and as captain in Pennsylvania cavalry, etc. He had to leave his thesis partly unfinished. But the real credit of all belongs to him. His father is M. D., and he is now studying medicine, attending lectures at Philadelphia. But botany is in him, and will probably come out....

There, I believe this is about all. J. A. Lowell has made a nice present of costly botanical books, of which more anon.

[March 18.]

... Rothrock is going with Kinnicut this week, to Northwestern America, Norton’s Sound, etc., to explore on telegraph route close along the Arctic Circle. Any pines there you want?...

March 29.

... No, Mrs. Gray did not go to inauguration ball. But she has had a good time. Her brother, the general, took her from Fortress Monroe, where she went, up to the front and close to rebel lines; where she had the honor of having a rebel shell thrown at her!

I expect her home again to-morrow.

No, I don’t get a curator, and I want one sadly. Yet it is as well Fendler did not come, as it might have been difficult for me to pay him. He, however, is just the man I want here, to take charge of herbarium and garden....

TO W. J. HOOKER.

Cambridge, April 24, 1865.

Mr. Wright is about to return to Cuba, to have one year more of exploration there, and especially to visit Turquino, the highest mountain of the island, and some other parts which are still promising.

He will now be able—as he is always most ready—to attend to the gathering of seeds of palms, or other seeds, or things you may want at Kew. He has now some good and kind friends in the country, and deserves them, for he is one of the most hearty, single-minded, and disinterested persons I ever knew, as well as an admirable collector; but being rather rough in exterior, he does not like to come into contact with official people, unless properly accredited. But if armed with official instructions to British consuls, etc., and so having the means of very promptly turning over, without bother or uncertainty, whatever he may collect for you, I have no doubt you may turn him to excellent account. Perhaps, however, he will not long remain in Cuba; for there is a prospect of getting him attached (nominally, without any emolument) to the United States consulate-general at Hayti, so that he may explore the botany of that island, as he has done that of Cuba. But I doubt if he will keep in the field many years more, or do such hard work as he has done in former years. I wish him to explore Hayti, however, and then associate himself with Grisebach in the production of a Flora Antillana, or at least a Flora Cubensis, if Grisebach inclines to work longer at West Indian botany, after having finished the critical enumeration of Cuban plants (founded mainly on Wright’s collections) which he is now occupied with....

It seems like old times to be writing to you. We have the less occasion for direct correspondence of late years, owing to my having such a capital correspondent, as well as a capital friend, in Joseph. I know not how I could get on without him. I look with great satisfaction upon his splendid scientific career, and feel that you must take great pride in it. I rejoice to hear that you are so well and hearty, and at work with vigor, comfort, and success upon the “Synopsis Filicum.”

Dr. Brewer sends his regards. He goes this week to New Haven (Yale College), to attend to the opening of his work as professor of agriculture. I was running over his collections, naming and characterizing the new things, and laying out a set for you of all you could wish. But since spring opened, my college work has been so pressing that all else has been interrupted, perhaps will be in abeyance till near midsummer.

I must not fail to tell you that our good friend Dr. Torrey sailed yesterday for California! via the Isthmus, to return three or four months hence, perhaps overland.

He is a much trusted officer of government, as assayer of the United States assay office at New York, and the secretary of the treasury, knowing that he needs some respite and change, has arranged this trip for him, upon business of the department, by no means of an onerous character.

He has long wished to set eyes upon California, and I am glad he has such a pleasant opportunity of doing so.

TO R. W. CHURCH.

May 1, 1865.

I have long wished to communicate with you, but it is long since I have written any but pressing letters; a large and ever-increasing scientific correspondence and various business matters absorbing all my leisure and powers, as the times and events also absorb our thoughts. You can imagine how deeply we have felt, rejoiced, and suffered during the last month or so.

Well, “treason has done its worst,” and rebellion, as an organized power, is essentially brought to an end. Slavery is done away, and we have now the task of establishing a new and better order of things at the South, of replacing barbarous by civilized and free institutions. A heavy task, no doubt; but the good Providence that has so wonderfully shaped our ways and sustained us thus far, we humbly and confidently rely on to carry our dear country through all its trials.

I doubt if you will have in England a full conception of the profound impression which this last atrocious crime has made, filling the whole land with the deepest and tenderest grief, like that of a personal bereavement; inexpressibly shocking, but never for a moment bewildering the country nor deranging the action of the government. The manner in which both our victories and sorrows have affected the country is most hopeful, and promises the best results. There is much yet to do and to suffer, and there is need of wisdom, patience, and sacrifice in the renovation of our country, and the establishment of free institutions throughout the South, involving as it does the complete reconstruction of society there. But under God’s blessing, we expect full success in due time.

As to myself, I can say little now. I am quite overworked at this season, but I hope that hereafter a rearrangement of my work in the university may bring some relief.

I am beginning to enjoy the advantage and comfort of the establishment of my herbarium, and the building quite meets my expectations. The collections are fast increasing; faster than I can take care of them, through the bounty of my scientific correspondents; while Mr. Lowell’s donation of botanical books is of the value of about £300.

November 16, 1865.

Now do not be startled at a letter from me written the very evening of the day in which arrived your pleasant favor of the 1st inst. For to-day I also received the inclosed official letter, which has been lying, I suppose, for want of your address. And so I send it forward at once.

In fact, the fund raised for the support of the herbarium (nearly $11,000) has been till very lately retained in the hands of the gentleman who took charge of raising it, in the form of a good investment, and is now at length made over to the corporation of the university in trust. Your £5 I turned in at the time when exchange was at the highest (i. e., our currency most depreciated), so it figures as fifty dollars,—quite a sum,—and for it, as for the rest of the capital, we get, up to 1881, six per cent per annum in gold, if the United States government lasts. And we now feel confident enough of that.

Your letters are always very pleasant to us, and that of to-day is very gratifying.

Yes, we, too, should not have said this was the way in which we would have had slavery destroyed,—by no means. We wished it by a slow process which would have cost no life, injured no property, but benefited all as it went on. But our misguided Southern brethren would have it otherwise, and so it was. And it is something to be glad of, after all, that it was done in our day, and we think thoroughly. I take a weekly newspaper, the “Nation,” which is on the plan of the “Spectator” and the “Saturday Review,” etc., but we have few good paragraph-writers, and our best writers will not write. But this paper may interest you, at least in the letters of its correspondent traveling in the South. I post some numbers to your address, and I will send some more if you care to see them. Otherwise the numbers are thrown aside, for I do not keep them.

Even here we have the same sort of liking for Palmerston which the mass of English have, and no better reason to give for it; and we look with a sort of fascinated interest upon Gladstone, and expect to see him premier before long, in a year or two, and we wonder how he will get on in so critical a position as he will be in. Goldwin Smith I met, but saw not very much of. He was in very delicate health. Fraser I did not see, though he was my father-in-law’s guest, and was very much liked by all. Both had troops of friends. Mrs. Gray and I were in the country when Fraser was at Mr. Loring’s house on the shore.

The short space left on my sheet must be all devoted to an earnest exhortation for you to follow your two friends’ example. Come over and see us, and make our quiet house your home, from which you can travel as much as you like and see the country in this interesting phase. Pray think of it seriously. The expense need not be great.

Mrs. Gray, with kindest remembrances, seconds my request, and wishes it extended to Mrs. Church.

Cordially yours,
Asa Gray.

TO CHARLES DARWIN.

May 15, 1865.

Your kind letter of the 19th ult. crossed a brief note from me. I am too much distracted with work at this season to write letters on our affairs, and if I once begin, I should not know where to stop. You have always been sympathizing and just, and I appreciate your hearty congratulations on the success of our just endeavors. You have since had much more to rejoice over, as well as to sorrow with us. But the noble manner in which our country has borne itself should give you real satisfaction. We appreciate, too, the good feeling of England in its hearty grief at the murder of Lincoln.

Don’t talk about our “hating” you, nor suppose that we want to rob you of Canada, for which nobody cares.

We think we have been ill-used by you, when you thought us weak and broken, and when we expected better things. We have learned that we must be strong to live in peace and comfort with England, otherwise we should have to eat much dirt. But now that we are on our feet again, all will go well, and hatred will disappear. Indeed I see little of that.

I must look to the Plantago dimorphism, for, as you say, these plants, fertilized by the wind, would gain nothing by being dimorphic. No dimorphic species grows very near here, nor can I now get seeds of P. Virginica. Perhaps a good look at even dried specimens, under your hints, may settle the matter.

I was exceedingly interested with the Lythrum paper (but had no time to write a notice of it), and I wait expectingly for your Climbing plants. You are the very prince of investigators. We hope presently to make Mrs. Wedgewood’s acquaintance.

July 24.

I am reading in snatches your admirable paper on Climbing plants,—as yet only eighty-eight pages of it, and am watching with great interest all the climbers I have at hand. What a nice piece of work you have made of it!

I see you explain and illustrate at length the double turn of a caught tendril. Is it not enough to say that, with both ends fixed, if it shortens, say by the contraction of one side, it must by mechanical necessity turn its coil different ways from a neutral point?

Ere this, Mrs. Wedgewood should be back from Canada, but I have not yet learned that she is so. She was to let me know, and we would have a day on the shore, where Mr. Loring lives in summer,—a pretty bit of country. But it is now too late.

I wish she could have been here on Friday, when we welcomed back our Harvard men who had been in the war,—over five hundred of them,—and remembered those who had died for their country. What a day we had!

Jefferson Davis richly deserves to be hanged. We are willing to leave the case in the hands of the government, who must take the responsibility. If I were responsible, I would have him tried for treason (the worst of crimes in a republic), convicted, sentenced to death; and then I think I should commute the penalty, not out of any consideration for him, but from policy, and for his more complete humiliation. The only letters I have received expressing a desire to hang him are from rebeldom itself,—from Alabama. You see slavery is dead, dead,—an absolute unanimity as to this. The revolted States will behave as badly as they can, but they are so thoroughly whipped that they can’t stir, hand or foot, and we are disbanding all our armies,—a corporal’s guard is enough to hold South Carolina. Seriously, there are difficult questions before us, but only one result is possible: the South must be renovated, and Yankeefied.

Well, take good care of yourself, and let me know that you are again in comfortable condition.

November 6.

I am very glad to hear from you, and to see half your letter of October 19 in your own handwriting is a good sign. I do hope you may get a comfortable winter, and bring out your next volume without breaking down.

I am pleased that you approve my abstract of your Climber paper, but observe it was only of the first part of your elaborate article. But as to the praise you speak of, I am sure you pay me back with interest.

I lately sent “Silliman” as much more—a large part, indeed, extracts, which I could not shorten—on the Tendril-bearing part of your paper. But Dana sent me the proof, with all my long extracts omitted for want of room. This reduced my article to incoherence, so I begged all to be laid over for the January number, when I hope to have room. I entertained our social scientific club here with your article, and all were greatly interested.

As to climbing roses, they are the strong summer shoots, growing after flowering, which I find frequently running their heads into dark corners of the porch over my door, etc.

That is very curious, but quite what I looked for, that dimorphous species self-fertilized should act like hybrids (sterile or dwarf, etc.).

You must publish these facts in some brief article.

“Stephens” (Stevens) was a New Yorker; is dead, years ago; wrote most amusing and popular travels; in Egypt, as well. Central America was his first and freshest book, but only amusing, as far as I recollect.

So Palmerston is gone. A fine specimen of a John Bull he was, a very typical specimen. We Yankees can’t help admiring and liking him, though not for any good he ever did us. But as for his successor, he is a prig, a juiceless stick.

Don’t you think Adams pays him back nicely for proposing that they should sit down and rejoice together over the abolition of slavery? Just see how the world has moved. Turn back to Russell’s lecture to be read to Mr. Lincoln on occasion of his proclamation of emancipation!

Good-by, my dear, good fellow, and recover health as fast as ever you can.

Yours affectionately,
A. Gray.

TO CHARLES WRIGHT.

Cambridge, June 28, 1865.

I am not going on so any more. A letter from me you shall have. To be sure I have had none from you since you sailed, but that is no matter. College and garden and herbarium work together are enough to drive one mad; but now the college work begins to hold up, and will soon be over. And as to herbarium, Fendler has at length promised to come at the end of the summer and help me—all winter at least, perhaps longer....

Oh, yes! I have yours of “Habana,” May 9th, with your shipboard studies on the variations of Chapman and Grisebach. Well, sometimes one wrong, sometimes the other; sometimes a difference as to who the author of a book is,—Michaux, whose name is on the work, Richard, who wrote it incog.

I inclose my last from Grisebach. I am hoping to arrange to have the catalogue of Cuba plants printed or stereotyped at Göttingen, for the Smithsonian contributions, and have written Grisebach to cultivate his Spanish influence in the view of having that government at length patronize effectively the bringing out of a Flora Cubensis, by Wright and Grisebach.

You owe this letter partly to the general disturbance of an uneasy conscience, and partly to a sudden cold caught by carelessness in hot weather, which unfits me for more driving work. It is getting better. I hope to write you again before I catch a new one.

July 4, Eighty-ninth Anniversary
of the United States.

Yours of June 9-21 reached me the very day that I mailed my last missive to you, a good long letter. Here is a fine letter from you, showing how busy and active a man you are. Pretty well for a man of your age to be shinning up palm-trees, and barking your shins. Be careful! Grisebach will take your criticisms all right, no doubt. Yesterday I got the inclosed from him. Very well. Is the Cuban M. Sauvalle?...

Dr. Hooker has sent me a specimen of Welwitschia, that queer African tree a foot high, many years old, and with only two leaves, and those all in shreds....

September 5.

... Dear, good Sir William Hooker is dead,—of diphtheria,—on the 15th August, six weeks over eighty years. I have no news yet from the family; but learn indirectly that Dr. Hooker is sick, “a gastric affection.” I do hope it is nothing dangerous....

Dr. Gray wrote for the “American Journal of Science” a memoir of his dear friend, Sir William Hooker, in which, after describing his immense labors in publications of so many different branches, he says:—

“Our survey of what Sir William Hooker did for science would be incomplete indeed if it were confined to his published works, numerous and important as they are, and the wise and efficient administration through which, in a short space of twenty-four years, a queen’s flower and kitchen garden and pleasure grounds have been transformed into an imperial botanical establishment of unrivaled interest and value. Account should be taken of the spirit in which he worked, of the researches and explorations he promoted, of the aid and encouragement he extended to his fellow-laborers, especially to young and rising botanists, and of the means and appliances he gathered for their use no less than his own.

“The single-mindedness with which he gave himself to his scientific work, and the conscientiousness with which he lived for science while he lived by it, were above all praise. Eminently fitted to shine in society ... he never dissipated his time and energies in the round of fashionable life, but ever avoided the social prominence and worldly distractions which some sedulously seek....

“Nor was there in him the least manifestation of a tendency to overshadow the science with his own importance, or of indifference to its general advancement....

“To the wide circle of botanists in which he has long filled so conspicuous a place, ... it is superfluous to say that Sir William Hooker was one of the most admirable of men, a model Christian gentleman.”

Dr. Gray was appointed by Mr. Peabody himself a member of the “Board of Trustees of the Peabody Museum of American Archæology and Ethnology in connection with Harvard University” when it was founded in 1866. The Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, offering the resolutions in memory of Dr. Gray, at the meeting in 1888, says, “From first to last, as I can bear witness, he was a most faithful and valuable member of our Board; he was always at our meetings and took an active interest in all our work. In 1874, on the death of Jeffries Wyman, he voluntarily assumed the curatorship of our Museum, and did excellent service until the appointment of Professor Putnam.”

TO R. W. CHURCH.

Sunday evening, February 25, 1866.

The number of the “Guardian” followed closely upon your note of the 9th instant, and I have just risen from the reading of your review of “Ecce Homo.” I knew nothing of this remarkable book, beyond having seen the title. The notice in the “Spectator” had escaped me, or rather, through a change in the order of circulation in our book club, that number of “Spectator” has not yet come round to me. But I have to thank you heartily for calling my attention to it, and especially for sending me your own published and well-considered thoughts of it. I greatly admire your analysis of the book, and what I thus learn of it greatly impresses me. I shall procure it without delay. I long, not only to read it myself, but to put it into the hands of some friends. Such a production is timely, and will be very useful. I hope the unknown writer will go on, and as he goes on bring out, in the same fresh and untechnical way, all the essentials of Christian belief. Even if he does not, it will have great value as it is; and one will be curious to see how he can fail to raise the superstructure which this foundation seems to be designed to bear. I have long thought it very important that these subjects and the whole range of connected questions need to be treated by a layman from an unprofessional point of view, and quite apart from theological language or conventional modes of thought, say by a lawyer of a judicial turn of mind, or by a physicist or naturalist, who understands and feels the scientific difficulties, and the prevalent state of mind, especially among scientific people, which most divines persist in ignoring.

As soon as I get this book, and have attentively read it, I shall probably wish to speak of it again to you. If I find that it does not receive notice in this country, I will see that attention is in some way called to it. But I should think it likely to attract attention in this country at once.

I have never thanked you for your letter of December 6, and for the hope, faint though it be, that you may come over and see us some day. Pray don’t give over the thought, and some day you may chance to bring it about. Cambridge is not a bad point from which to sally forth in little explorations of American life....

We have much anxiety as to what we can do with the South now we have got it; and our President Johnson is not a Lincoln. The breach which has just occurred, and which may cause great trouble, has been feared for some time; and the blame is to be assigned in part to the indiscretion and impracticability of a few of the advanced Republican leaders. We have survived worse scenes and darker prospects, and shall surmount these troubles, I trust, in time. But here things cannot always be done in the wisest way....

I imagine Earl Russell is safe for a year or two, since no other minstry could well be found to replace him. I should like, before long, to see Gladstone at the helm.

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

... The small parcel from Andersson has come. From him I have a nice oil copy of the portrait of Linnæus, painted by Madame Andersson.

Chapman is here, excellent, loyal man all through; hates copperheads; is soon going back, so that you can write him at Apalachicola for Junci. I have told him what you are at with the genus.

March 20, 1866.

I have got Mann well installed in Fendler’s place, and he is doing well, doing botanical work, too, on his Sandwich Island plants; will bring out an Enum. Pl. Hawaiens....

July 30.

Back to-day from a coasting voyage of four or five days, I find yours of 25th instant....

I have promised Clinton I will go to Buffalo, to the meeting reviving the American Association; then back home, to work, by 20th August.

About the Prussian war I think as you do. About domestic matters I have not changed at all my mode of thinking, as I know. But no time for these things....

TO CHARLES WRIGHT.

May 19, 1866.

... I am so driven, so distracted. Bless your stars you are not a professor, and president of Academy, and have a botanical garden and no gardener well trained, and have students, and everything. My correspondence all in arrears, and I am getting hardened and don’t care....

You know I am always hard pressed and hard worked at this season; and this year it is far worse than ever. Besides the bother of my classes, unusually bothering on the new arrangement, there is a new gardener and a great deficit or rather deficiency of funds to carry on the Garden, so I have to run that concern pretty much myself. And, to crown all, my little new French gardener, in his anxiety over the work, has got into a state of nervous excitement, gets no sleep nights, and if not soon relieved will, I fear, become truly insane.... If he continues half crazed, you may expect me crazed next. Then there are some special scientific students working up here, to add to my botheration.

So do not you “growl” at me now if you can help it....

Alas, your Algæ will be too late for dear Harvey. He is dying of consumption, and we may hear of the end any day. This is all at present from

Your old, worn-out friend,
Asa Gray.

TO GEORGE BENTHAM.

June 12, 1866.

We have as many asters as we can manage in America, and in the northern hemisphere of the Old World. I pray you keep out at least Australian things if it be possible.

I envy you more and more in being able to devote yourself to systematic botany steadily, without the distraction and sad consumption of time in professional and administrative duties and avocations, which make havoc of the opportunities of most botanists, and make their work which they are able to do far less valuable than it would otherwise be. And you work on with such quiet determination! The lamented losses of the last year or two have already made you the Nestor, though I cannot think you old. I do hope you have a fair number of good working years yet, in which you can make your great experience tell to utmost advantage....

Much against my will, I have this summer to work upon a new edition of my “Manual of the Northern United States Botany,” to which there is much to be done. I shall not, however, so recast the work as I should if I could defer it till I had blocked out the outlines of a similar but much larger volume for all the United States of America, and till your “Genera Flora” had been carried much farther.

What do you intend for this summer? A Continental excursion?

Ever, my dear Bentham, most cordially yours,

A. Gray.

Dr. Farlow, in his memoir in “Proceedings of the American Academy,” speaks of the great interest which Dr. Gray took at this time in observing tendrils and climbing plants. The glass corridor then connecting the herbarium and his study was very much occupied by climbers, and notes were constantly taken of times of revolution, etc. He says, “Dr. Gray hardly ever passed in or out of the herbarium without stroking (patting them on the back by way of encouraging them, it almost seemed) the tendrils of the climbers on the walls and porch; and on the announcement that a student had discovered another case of cross-fertilization in the garden, he would rush out bare-headed and breathless, like a schoolboy, to see the thing with his own critical eyes.”

TO CHARLES DARWIN.

May 7, 1866.

I am so delighted to get a letter from you, written with your own hand, and to see that you can work again a little.

I have no new facts about the influence of pollen on fruits, nor about influence of grafts.

I have got a little plant of Bignonia capreolata growing here. I punched a lot of holes into the shady side of a lath; the tendrils thrust their ends in; also into a cornice, but did not stay; either the movement of the stem or tendril, or, at length, the shortening of the body of the tendril by coiling, which it does promptly, brought all away. I have stuck some cotton on to the lath at the proper height for the next pair of tendrils. The tendril near by stuck fast at once, and is beginning to develop the disks, and now the tendril of the other leaf has bent abruptly round, and seized the cotton with avidity. Are there any new observations I can make?

The Fenian scare, we have supposed here, was mainly a plan of certain rogues here to fleece their poor countrymen and women, poor servants and working-men! Nothing more could come of it. But I sadly fear many here have enjoyed the trouble it has given and the alarm it has excited, especially among our neighbors in New Brunswick, who rather enjoyed our woes two or three years ago.

Yes, slavery is thoroughly done for. We have a bad set to deal with at the South; and holding wolf by the ears is no pleasant nor hopeful occupation, as the temper of the wolf does not improve under the holding. But we shall jangle out of the difficulty in time, even with such a crooked character as our President to deal with also.

Bring out the book on Variation soon.

July 3.

... So there is war on the Continent; really a war “for empire,” as Lord Russell said our war was. Now our war was a simple necessity; this Continental one a crime, in which all parties participate. I wish, but do not expect, Prussia to be crushed as one result. I wish all her coast could be annexed to Denmark! However, it is no affair of ours, being on the other side of the Atlantic. And when a nation can get strength and power by robbery, it will be likely to rob.

August 7.

... You should study Wyman’s observations in his own papers. He is always careful to keep his inferences close to his facts, and is as good an experimenter, I judge, as he is an observer. He has a new series of observations to publish. I think that he has not at all pronounced in favor of spontaneous generation, but I will bet on his experiments against Pasteur, any day.

TO CHARLES WRIGHT.

November 23.

You may well complain that I neglect you. But—

1. I had, till now, nothing special to write.

2. I have been daily expecting to hear from Grisebach, and have sheets to send you, or the copies via Westermann. But not a bit of it yet. The conquest of Hanover by the Prussians seems to have annihilated Grisebach.

3. I have been, am so—busy is not the word for it. I can’t think of any to express it. I suppose that I have now lying by me more than fifty unanswered letters, though I keep answering the most pressing as fast nearly as they come in. But the rest get neglected, inevitably. I read your letters and follow your work in Cuba with interest. I want you to get all the plants you can (but I see not that you can exhaust Cuba), and then come and settle down here, and work up, as you only can, a nice Flora Cubana. That you are bound to do, just as I am to do the Flora of North America. I see some faint prospect that I may yet, and before very long, be able to sit down to it. But you and I are bound to do these two things yet!...

The seeds I put loose in this sheet are Cinchona officinalis. Get the tree introduced into your cooler region, that is, the Caffetals of east Cuba, and the tree will be commercially important in time, and you will be a benefactor of your species. Enough for once.

Ever your old friend,
A. Gray.

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

November 20, 1866.

Dear Engelmann,—Yes, I have a heap of unanswered letters from you. But I have not one moment of time.

I have copy of “Manual” in printer’s hands up to Compositæ, and am only now two days ahead; have been only two hours ahead day after day!! It is awful! So much other work too!...

If I could get five hundred to one thousand more a year I would at once resign professorship and salary....

I am well, never more hearty; but worked like a coach-horse. I have got my fund raised for the Garden: small, but we have now clear $2,500 or $2,600 a year for Garden.

February 27, 1867.

How much I am indebted to you! No one else who undertakes to help me ever makes out much, at least to save me time and trouble....

I have not time to write details of the little I know about the National Academy. But I have seen enough to make it clear that I should not be taking any more responsibility about it. So last month I sent my resignation. They have put me on the list of Honorary Members. The American Academy is as much as I want to attend to, and I do my duty to society in looking well after that....

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

September 10, 1866.

... The war near you was sharp and quick. Switzerland is as fortunately placed as any small nation can be, when surrounded by strong ones; but you see that in this world only strength can be relied on. See what indignity small and weak nations have to suffer. I trust present peace may last to consolidate a new Germany. But if not, you may have to dread a more general upturning on the Continent.

October 21, 1867.

... Your analysis of the whole subject of rules in nomenclature I think is sound and lawyer-like, or rather judicial, as well as judicious. There are dangers and inconveniences on every side, and good sense and discretion are needed in the application of these as of all rules....

Very faithfully yours,
Asa Gray.

TO GEORGE BENTHAM.

January 21, 1867.

My dear Bentham,—Many thanks for your kind remembrance of us in your letter at the end of the year, which reached me only three or four days ago. I avail myself of the first foreign post since to return, with Mrs. Gray’s love, our heartiest good wishes to Mrs. Bentham and yourself, and I trust you will be able to keep up yet, for a good many precious years, the steady botanical work which you make so telling....

I have no doubt of the full and entire correctness of the principles you work on; and the Kew Floras and the “Genera Plantarum” will more than anything else determine the public botanical opinion and mode of working for the next generation. But I suspect that there will remain after all a great many monotypic genera (consider how many of the most distinct genera are so, or nearly so); and I imagine it is best to work without prejudice for or against them.

I dare promise I shall be satisfied with all you have done in Compositæ. As to Umbelliferæ, I wish you joy of the job, and do hope you will reduce the genera twenty per cent at least. I never could take the least satisfaction in them. I never could collate our Umbelliferæ with European genera, and I have no clear conception of more than half a dozen of our genera....

Ever, dear Bentham, yours most cordially,
A. Gray.

TO CHARLES DARWIN.

Cambridge, March 26, 1867.

This is to acknowledge yours of February 28.

You see I have printed your queries privately (fifty copies), as the best way of putting them where useful answers may be expected. Most of them will go into the hands of agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau, etc. Others to persons I or Wyman may know and rely on. I wish I had had them sooner. My crony Wyman has been two months in Florida, but will be home again before I could send to him.

I did not write the article in the “Nation” on Popular Lecturing, though it contains so many things I have said over and over that it startled me. Then it hits so many nails square on the head that I should think it could be written only in Cambridge or hereabouts.

It is generally supposed to be written by a person in New York, but I suspect a person near by here,—only suspect....

Yes, Magnolia seeds hang out awhile in autumn, finally stretch and break the threads of spiral vessels. Whether birds eat them I don’t know. They look enticing and have a pulpy coat, are bitter and spicy.

Shall I send you more of these circulars?

I shall send to Indian people too.

TO CHARLES WRIGHT.

April 2, 1867.

I sent your twenty dollars to aid the subscription for the starving Southerners. There have been handsome sums raised for them in the Northern States. But I am afraid you must get most imperfect and one-sided statements of the doings of Congress by the tone of your letters, and decidedly need enlightenment. It is the President, not Congress, that needs to learn the Constitution and the laws of the land. And your Southern loyal friends, if you could get voice of them, would beg Congress to take even more urgent steps for their protection and defense by reconstruction. However, things seem to be going on now pretty satisfactorily. The President is sinking into his deserved insignificance, and the leading rebels are coming out decidedly more sensibly than many of their professed Northern friends. And we hope, therefore, that they may begin to give some fair chance to the loyal men of the South to be heard and to get their rights, which have been indeed shamefully trampled upon by the President and the dominant party at the South....

I have not time to answer all your interesting botanical notes, and can only thank you for them. I hope you will continue to keep well.

Our spring is late and wet. There is still quite a covering of snow in the garden, and we have had a deal of it in the winter, and wretched walking and getting about in every way. Happy you, in the tropics.

You ask who Austin is. He was an old protégé of Dr. Torrey; lives now in New Jersey, and studies Lemnaceæ and Hepaticæ.

... You will be more delighted than I am to know that the Democrats have probably carried Connecticut. But I am not much the contrary; for the Republicans are too many in Congress for their own good, or ours, and it secures the defeat of Barnum for Congress; as it should be....

April 8.

I have been having a Sunday’s work over your plants.

It grieves my heart and will grieve yours badly when I tell you that your boxes were put under a cargo of wet sugar, which drained into them, and have ruined the collection.

... As to specimens to dispose of, say only one half or one third of the whole mass is left fit for it. Oh dear! God grant you patience! Will you have the courage to set to work over again?

I will try next to tell you what is worst.

Ever your disconsolate,
A. Gray.

TO WILLIAM M. CANBY.

July 8, 1867.

My dear Canby, ... I am charmed with what you say of Dionæa, can confirm some of it, and believe all the rest. Never mind the anatomy of the leaf now—little promise from that; but do go on with experiments on feeding, and record them carefully, and publish when ready.

I am going to send your letter to Darwin, who will be delighted, and will probably suggest experiments. He has an eminently suggestive mind.

I suppose you know the slow way Drosera rotundifolia catches flies, doubtless for same purpose, though it can absorb the juices only through its bristles. I always thought it took in only the gases disengaged by putrefaction.

If you don’t know the trick of Drosera, which you should study, too, I will tell you, if you write to me at Sauquoit, Oneida County, New York.

Sauquoit, N. Y., July 17.

I have here yours of 13th.

If on leaf of Drosera rotundifolia, in good healthy condition, you put a small fly—somewhat crippled is surer—the sticky pellucid glands will hold him fast. By degrees (I have never seen it under ten or twelve hours at least) some of the bristles outside, which have not touched the fly, will turn inward and bring their sticky tip against the insect; later still others and more external ones turn in, and so the fly is bound by many liliputian bands. As it putrefies, I wonder if the leaf merely takes its chance of getting some of the disengaged gases, or whether it reabsorbs the clear fluid of the glands, charged now with some animal matter.

In transplanting some Drosera into a pan with wet moss, the older leaves may not work well; but the new ones developed soon will do better. Pray experiment upon this and Dionæa. I wonder if there ever were series of intermediate states between the inefficient Drosera, and the expert Dionæa....

August 21.

... I inclose half a letter which came from Darwin this morning. I hope you will go on with work on Dionæa....

C. DARWIN TO A. GRAY.

(Half of letter referred to above.)

Down, Bromley, Kent, August 8.

My dear Gray,—I have been glad to see Mr. Canby’s interesting letter on Dionæa, and I thank you for sending it; but unfortunately the facts are not new to me. Several years ago I observed the secretion of the “gastric juices” and the close adhesion of the two sides of the leaf when a fly was caught. I keep my notes in such an odd fashion that it would take me some time to find them. I am almost sure I ascertained the acid reaction of the secretion and its antiseptic power, but I cannot remember whether in this, or in analogous cases, I found its subsequent reabsorption. This letter fires me up to complete and publish on Drosera, Dionæa, etc., but when I shall get time I know not. I am working like a slave to complete my book.

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

July 6, 1867.

... Well, I have been free from much college work for ten days, and am quite free after Wednesday morning.

I seem as well as possible, bright and clear, and should be content just to visit my old mother and come right back to work on Californian plants, which I have been looking at for a few days. But my wife says I shall take four weeks, and on being weighed I find that my former 140-143 lbs. is reduced to 131.

So I must waste time and money in traveling, which I am reconciled to, as Mrs. Gray needs it much.

From Oneida County, New York, I am going (with Mrs. G.) to drive into northwest and central Pennsylvania and then visit a sister in Michigan. Mrs. Gray insists that we must go to Chicago, which she wishes to see, though I do not. I hate towns, especially new ones. Only think how near I shall be to you!

So you saw old Bigelow, who is quite delighted with Shaw’s grounds, etc.

Torrey has just made me a little visit. Good, kind soul he is....

August 15.

We got home three days ago. Hot weather broke down my wife’s courage, as I feared, and we went no farther west than Tecumseh, Michigan; made a short visit to Sullivant at Columbus, then meandered through west and north of Pennsylvania to central New York again, and hearing of Mrs. Gray’s father’s illness came rapidly home....

I am very well; have put on three pounds’ weight.

We must go and see you and all the great West at some proper season, spring or late fall....

I germinated for two years Nelumbium, but soon lose them. If you can, send me some seeds this fall to try once more....

TO GEORGE BENTHAM.

October 14, 1867.

... Yes, I did receive your address, read it hastily, and sent it to “Silliman’s Journal” to be reprinted. It was too late for the September number, but will be the leading article in the November number. I have read a proof and am daily expecting a printed sheet, which I can send to you, with one or two little remarks. I was exceedingly pleased with it; so is Professor Henry. We both wondered how you could have so exactly hit not one, but several nails on the head, as you have done. It will be much read here, and will be truly useful.

You remind me that I ought to have criticised your working of Australian Compositæ. The trouble is, that, except North American genera, these things have long been quite out of my head. It will be unsafe for me to approve or otherwise till I can get at work a little over them, which it is not likely I can at present. I just fancy that in your dislike of monotypic genera—which you abhor as nature does a vacuum—you may have lumped up the angiantheous genera rather too much.

I am straining every nerve to get into a position to get at a synopsis of North American plants, and my present work upon Bolander’s collection is a part of the preparation. But I cannot lay the corner-stone till college work is over, next July. Meanwhile I want suggestions as to form, and how to condense references to the utmost and crowd a page, yet leaving it clear and comely. When I have got the thing blocked out, and have worked up a part, then Mrs. G. and I hope to go over and see you, and to stay a good long while. Adieu, till next week.

Ever yours,
A. Gray.

TO R. W. CHURCH.

December 5, 1867.

Before the year closes I mean you shall have a note from me, to renew on my part an intercourse which has been interrupted through negligence of mine. I find I get more and more overloaded as I grow older, and I dare say you find it the same. Still we must exchange a word now and then.

I have to tell you of the severe loss we have had in the death, in October, of Mrs. Gray’s good and kind father, Mr. Loring. He and my wife were very much to each other, and in former years had been unusually intimate companions; and his death at seventy-three, quite unexpected till within a few weeks of the event, is very much felt. Mrs. Gray’s own health, too, is but poor, though on the whole I trust it is becoming firmer.

If you see your friend Mr. Fraser (whom I, unfortunately, did not) you may learn from him what manner of man Mr. Loring was. I wish I knew him, to say to him how highly we value a letter he lately addressed to Mrs. Loring, and which I read yesterday,—so full of sympathy and just appreciation.

Mr. Fraser, you may be sure, is very much thought of here.

I hope that Dr. Hooker, of Kew, has sent on to you the numbers of the “Nation,” which I have for a year or more regularly posted to him, originally requesting he should do so. But it is quite likely the busy man has forgotten all about it.

For myself, I have passed my fifty-seventh anniversary, in firm health, feeling my age only in a treacherous memory—as respects names, etc., not as to events or friends. The memory of our delightful visit to Oxford is ever fresh.

TO CHARLES DARWIN.

February 24, 1868.

The other evening here I discoursed at our private club, by giving them an abstract of the chapters on Inheritance and Pangenesis; the former for Professor Bowen’s benefit. He and Agassiz took it all very well; and pangenesis seemed to strike all of us as being as good an hypothesis as one can now make....

On inside of leaf of Dionæa see the copious glands for secreting gastric juice.

... I do not wonder at your book being taken up at once, by the great numbers of people who need and understand it, and the thousands who jump at anything written by so notorious a writer as you are. The “Origin” will sell anything; and I believe people will get more for their money in this book than in even that, if they care for facts, which generally they do not.

May 25.

I want to write you a long letter, but the time is not to be had now. Many thanks for yours of May 8.

My notice of your book in the “Nation” was not intended to have anything in it, except for the groundlings; was only to make the book known and understood, a light affair.

My preface was written at the publishers’ request simply because yours had not come. The fellows put in both. The edition is not very nicely printed. Judging from the newspaper notices I think the book is taking famously. That agricultural newspaper is taken by the hundred thousand in the country. As to close of my article, to match close of your book,—you see plainly I was put on the defense by your reference to an old hazardous remark of mine. I found your stone-house argument unanswerable in substance (for the notion of design must after all rest mostly on faith, and on accumulation of adaptations, etc.); so all I could do was to find a vulnerable spot in the shaping of it, fire my little shot, and run away in the smoke.

Of course I understand your argument perfectly, and feel the weight of it.

We were intensely amused at the Edinburgh man, who suggests that I could easily smash you into little pieces! I wish he may live to see it done!

I am half dead with drudgery, half of it at least for other people; see no relief but to break up, and run over, with wife, who needs a change, to your side of the water for a good long while.

TO R. W. CHURCH.

June 22, 1868.

I have to send you—in a hasty line—my best thanks for remembering me so kindly: 1. In your letter of January 17, which I am so tardy in responding to.

2. The copy of Hooker edited by you, which I was pleased to have.

3. Your sermon at St. Mary’s, which Mrs. Gray and I both read with much interest. I admired your handling of an important topic, and the solid strength which comes from moderation of statement. It reminded me much of one of our best sermonizers here, who, though a good deal heterodox (I am sorry to say), treats such subjects more impressively than any one else and much in that way, his guarded understatements or concessions telling heavily in the argument.

I read and think of nothing but botany of late, having been too hard pressed for a long while. But last Sunday I read with interest the latter part of Mr. Gladstone’s essay on “Ecce Homo.”

There is something which seems to me very admirable and attachable about Gladstone. I wonder if his church friends and supporters will mostly drop him at the coming struggle, for his action looking to the disestablishment of the Irish church.

But the gist of my present note is to say, that I have got a year’s leave of absence, and Mrs. Gray and I expect to cross over to England in two months.

I find I must break up a set of engagements and of work, mainly for others, which absorbs too much of my time, and Mrs. Gray’s health makes me anxious to avoid another winter here, at present. The change will be good for us both. We mean to pass the whole autumn in England, mostly at Kew, and most of the winter in Italy and perhaps Egypt, where Mrs. Loring, now on the Continent (tell Mr. Fraser), expects to be, and we may be able to join the party, in a climate which may be advantageous after such a winter as our last.

Very sincerely yours,
Asa Gray.