Chapter VII: Travel in Europe and America (3)

His ascent of Gray’s Peak was made a great occasion in the neighborhood. A large party gathered from Georgetown and Empire City, and started the afternoon before, after having been most hospitably dined by Judge McMurdy, in Georgetown; the night was passed in a mining-tavern cabin, and the ascent, some going on horseback, some on foot, was made the next morning. Speeches were made on the summit, and resolutions passed to confirm the names Gray’s and Torrey’s peaks given in 1862 by Dr. Parry, who was himself happily with the party. The ascent is not as difficult as in most mountains of that height, as one can ride on horseback to the top in August, when the snow lies only in patches; the trail is mostly over the rough shale, and for a month or two the summit, though over 14,000 feet, is almost bare. The view of the innumerable peaks is very magnificent.

At Dubuque he was the guest of an old Fairfield comrade. As the retiring president of the American Association he gave his address,[91] written mostly in the cars on the long overland journey, in which he explained still further some of his long-meditated conclusions on the distribution of the flora of Western North America.

TO R. W. CHURCH.

CAMBRIDGE, October, 1872.

MY DEAR CHURCH,--I promised to myself, if I did not to you, that I would write you from the other side of this continent; but writing and journeying are incompatible, at least in case where the time for the one is too short for your undertakings. But now we have been a month at home, and more; the accumulation of things to be seen to is worked off or nearly, and I mean now to tell you something of our summer’s doings.

As soon as we were free we set out.... At Chicago we had two nights and a day in which to see the desolated and fast rebuilding town. From this place, over a thousand miles west of Boston, we made our proper start.... A welcome rain cooled the air and laid the dust that morning, and not a drop more of rain did we see, any more than in Egypt, from that day onward, until, six or seven weeks later, we were back at the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains, when there was an evening thunderstorm, and the next morning I called Mrs. Gray to the window to see a novel sight,--the streets dripping and muddy! I wish I could describe to you our journey, and the sort of life we were leading. But if I go into particulars there will be no end.

At Omaha we were on the Pacific Railroad proper, and soon upon the plains, at first the larger part cultivated, but barer and drier as we advanced westward, and ascended imperceptibly; so that the next twenty-four hours brought us, with some fine views of the range, to the foot of the Rocky Mountains and a height of 5,000 or 6,000 feet above the sea; that afternoon over the Black Hills of the Platte, 2,000 or 3,000 feet higher, and the highest elevation of the road,--higher than the passes through the Rocky Mountains beyond,--and at nightfall we were traversing the wide grassy Laramie Plains, a vast, sequestered sub-alpine meadow. And when I rose early next morning, we were running through a dry desert “sage brush” (wormwood) region (desert, except for the botanist,--the first plant I saw and clutched proved to be Grayia), the scanty waters of which run into the Colorado of the West and the Gulf of California.

Another twenty-four hours, through grand scenery, brought us, after three nights in our car berths, to Ogden, on Salt Lake, where we took a branch road and, skirting the lake along the whole eastern shore, reached Salt Lake City, the Mormon town, before sunset. Here we passed two nights and a day, and enjoyed scenery worth crossing the ocean for, and saw something of the strange life of the district.

Back to Ogden; two more nights and days, one long day crossing the Humboldt desert, rendered passable only by the Humboldt River, which, though the ragged mountains all run north and south, yet runs from east to west and marks its course by a narrow line of greenness, and at dusk we saw its end in the Humboldt sink, a lagoon without outlet on the western verge of the basin, against the Sierra, the arid side of which we were ascending all night, to awake among pine forests at sunrise; to breakfast upon the very summit soon after; to descend through most striking scenery into the great valley of California, and, traversing that and the Contra Costa range, to see the head of the Bay of San Francisco at dusk; to cross the bay in a steam-ferry, and reach our hotel in San Francisco at ten P.M.,--a journey full of interest, not a bit monotonous or dull, from first to last. There were fatigues and small discomforts, of course, but these are all forgotten long ago, and the whole transit dwells in memory as one continual and delightful piece of pleasant, novel, ever-varied, and instructive sight-seeing. Of course the identifying at sight, as we flew by, of flowers new to me in the living state, and the snatching at halts, and the physical features of districts which I had always been interested in, and knew much about but had never seen, all gave me occupation and continual pleasure. But it was much the same with all the party. Even the return journey was hardly less interesting....

From Dubuque we took steamer up the Mississippi River, through its finest scenery up to St. Paul, Minnesota; saw the falls of St. Anthony and Minnehaha; thence, while the rest of our party essayed Lake Superior, Mrs. Gray and I returned home by rapid stages.

I have only to-day finished the study and laying into the herbarium of specimens I gathered and dried, regretting the while that I did not collect more specimens and many other species, as I might have done.

Tyndall is in Boston, and I trust will be with us next week. I have not yet seen him, nor Froude, nor even MacDonald, the third lecturing notability in Boston.

TO CHARLES DARWIN.

CAMBRIDGE, October 6, 1872.

You delight me by your promise to take up Dionæa and Drosera now, and I imagine you as now about it. Good! And I am so glad you will take that opportunity to collect your botanical and quasi-botanical papers. These, with the Dionæa, etc., will make a nice and most welcome volume.

In answer to your query, I think I can “support the idea,” or the probability of it, “that tendrils become spiral after clasping an object from the stimulus from contact running down them.” For though some “tendrils do become spiral when they have clasped nothing,” others do not. The adjustment of the unstable equilibrium is more delicate in the former, so that it starts under some inappreciable cause or stimulus. That the stimulus may be so propagated downward is clear in the sensitive plant, where the closing of the leaflets in succession will follow the closing of the ultimate pair under slight and local irritation. And in the tendril the coiling below is just a continuation of the same movement or same change as that which incurved the tip in clasping, that is, a relative shortening of concave or lengthening of the convex side of the tendril. Would you not infer that the action was propagated downward?

So you were astonished at Mrs. Gray’s audacity. Well, “toujours l’audace;” she is all the better for it. Some horseback work in getting to and into the Yosemite Valley was severe, but she bore it so well that I ventured, when we made our detour into the Colorado Rocky Mountains, to take her up to the summit of Gray’s Peak, 14,300 feet, or thereabouts, where she acquitted herself nobly. The day was perfect, the success complete, and the memory of it one of the most delightful of the many pleasant memories of the whole journey. Our great trip was the round from San Francisco to Mariposa Grove, Yosemite Valley, entering over Glacier Point, from which (tell your sons) is a new trail down the 4,000 feet into the valley; made excursions from the valley during several days, and returned by a long sweep through the little Tuolumne grove, round foothills to Murphy’s and the Calaveras Grove, and so back to San Francisco. Afterwards Mrs. Gray and I went to Santa Cruz and up the San Lorenzo Valley among noble redwoods, rivaling the Sequoia gigantea. On return we made one stretch to the east base of the Rocky Mountains, then down to Denver, and up into the mountains, to 8,400 feet, where we had a pleasant week or more (just the climate to give strength to an invalid), whence I climbed a high mountain or two, among them Gray’s Peak, the highest, as already mentioned. Thence we came down to Dubuque and hot weather, on the Mississippi to St. Paul and St. Anthony, etc., and then home by rail, having been twelve busy weeks away.

Well, we are longing to do it again, and more! But I am settling down to my work as well as I may, well content with the summer’s holiday.

December 2, 1872.

Well, it is wonderful, your finding the nervous system of Dionæa!!! Pray take your time next spring, and do up both Drosera and Dionæa. I will endeavor next spring to get hold of Drosera filiformis and make the observations. I will also do better, by sending your note on to Mr. Canby, who lives near its habitat, and has done something already in such observations.

As to coiling of tendril. I think your idea is that in the coiling of a fixed tendril, one coil has its concave side the opposite of the part that has coiled the other way.

Now take a piece of tape say a span long; black one side, let some one hold the two ends while you twist in the middle. The two halves are coiled in opposite directions, just as a tendril which has caught does. The same color will be on the outside of the coil all the length.

Blacken with a stroke of paint a line along the whole length of a caught tendril. On straightening it out the black will be all on one side.

I have not had time to follow it up, and need not, since you are sure to do it. But I think it clear that one and the same side is concave, that is, the relatively shortened side, the whole length of the caught tendril. Do not you?

Mrs. Gray is absent while I write, or she would add her best regards and best wishes to my own for a happy New Year to you all.

TO C. W. ELIOT.

BOTANIC GARDEN, CAMBRIDGE, January 1, 1873.

MY DEAR PRESIDENT ELIOT,--Will you kindly present the inclosed communication to the corporation at its next meeting.

I need not say to you that I could not take so serious a step as this without much consideration, and that I would not do it if I were not confident that the department which I have served in the university for almost thirty-one years need not now suffer by my withdrawal. I am warned also by growing experience of the fact that the needful work which I could formerly do with ease can now be done only by effort, followed by exhaustion and other unpleasant effects, which may be expected to increase; and it is clear that I have left to me, at best, barely time enough, when rigorously economized, to complete the works for which I have long been pledged, and without the accomplishment of which my life will have been largely a failure. The corporation will perceive that I do not intend to be idle, but to concentrate what energies remain to me upon the kind of work for which I am best--and indeed peculiarly--fitted, both by disposition and by more than forty years of preparation. As this work proceeds, the herbarium of the university, always requiring attention during its continued increase, will be put into the condition in which I should leave it, with its value greatly enhanced. In view of this, and of the fact that the herbarium forms an important part of the apparatus of instruction here, I trust the corporation will think it reasonable to allow me the possession of the house I live in, in recompense of my services as curator of the herbarium.

I offer my resignation unconditionally, that the corporation may have, as it should, the whole matter in its hands without embarrassment. If it be desired to keep my name for the present upon the catalogue, and especially if the corporation should prefer not to place a permanent incumbent just yet in the Fisher professorship, I would in that case take the liberty to suggest that the present very capable and efficient assistant, Dr. Goodale, be made adjunct professor of vegetable physiology, with salary assigned from the Fisher professorship. I remain, dear Mr. President,

Very sincerely yours, ASA GRAY.

_Messrs. the President and Fellows of Harvard College_:

HONORABLE AND DEAR SIRS,--The time has arrived when I may, as I think without detriment to the university, retire from the professorship to which I was appointed in the spring of 1842; and I hereby tender my resignation of it, to take effect at the close of the present academic year, when I shall have completed thirty-one years of service.

I trust that I may still be useful to the university; and if agreeable to the corporation I should like to continue to be Curator of the Herbarium. With sincere regard, I am your obedient servant,

ASA GRAY. BOTANIC GARDEN, CAMBRIDGE, January 1, 1873.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

CAMBRIDGE, January 14, 1873.

MY DEAR DE CANDOLLE,--I am much and long in your debt,--all the more by your agreeable letter of the 16th ult....

Let me note points in your letter. Your volume of “Mélanges,” etc., has not yet come to hand,--but it is sure to come in time through the Smithsonian Institution, and will be received with welcome. I will see to the reproduction of the article on the Dominant Language of the Twentieth Century,--English of course. I am glad you will make a full index of the “Prodromus” quoad Genera. I wish it had been species, also!

Glaciers in California! Why, there is a fair remnant of one now, on the north side of Shasta,--and more in the southern part of the Sierra; and as to glacial marks, the geologists note them abundantly.

I am glad you saw much of Mr. Adams at Vallon. Madame A. is the more of a talker, is she not? Or, perhaps she does not speak French. Adams is vice-president of our American Academy; and is, I hope, presiding this evening at a meeting which I myself am not well enough to attend. I hope he will become president, for I mean to retire in May....

Dr. Parry passed last summer in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, where Madame and I visited him, in his cabin; and we ascended Gray’s Peak together (14,400 feet). Torrey, old as he is, was there later, but did not get up the twin Torrey’s Peak, though his daughter did surmount Gray’s Peak....

Now about myself. In what time I can save I am assisting Brewer in the “Flora of California,” and shall do for him the Monopetalæ, and finish next summer, if my health does not fail.

Moreover, this is my last year of university work. I finish in July, and then resign, and give my remaining time to the “Flora of North America.” Although it is so arranged, it is not yet to be announced. It is difficult to drop at once the many things I have charge of, and the vast correspondence all over the country, which has been very useful to me, and others, but which takes a deal of time. But I am making a fairly good beginning. Mrs. Gray delights with me in the prospect of release from many a care, and of devoting myself without distraction to the work I have always liked best.

I really hope it is not too late to do something (a few lines from you upon this subject might, _entre nous_, be useful to me).

TO ----.

CAMBRIDGE, May 18, 1873.

... I cannot object to your maintaining the hypothesis that each and every existing plant and animal form has been directly created (or mediately created, if you see a difference) out of the soil, pure hypothesis though it be, and one which “from the nature of the case can never be directly proved.” It is natural that you should hold to such hypothesis as long as you believe it to be possibly tenable.

But what I may ask you very seriously to consider is, whether you are prepared to bear the responsibility you assume in maintaining and teaching that no hypothesis of the derivation of existing “specific” forms from previous ones more or less like them can logically be theistic and religious. How far any such hypothesis may be probable or tenable in view of the evidence is not the question raised, but a far more momentous one.

Consider what the “younger men who learn of you” will be likely to think when they come to discard, as the best informed ones probably will after a while, your scientific views on this subject; but still, perchance, confide in your dictum that the doctrine of the derivative origin of one species from another cannot logically stop short of “blank materialism, destructive both of science and religion, and even ... to morals and social organization.”

There will be “a heavy penalty to pay,” but there are two sides to the question as to who is to pay a part of it. What I said in the last paragraph of the Dubuque address “we need not here consider”[92] is, nevertheless, worthy of consideration.

The time is not very distant, I imagine, when those who have protested against such reckless statements will be thought to have done some service to religion as well as to science.

I trust that the foundations of theism and of the Christian religion rest upon firmer foundations than the so-called “immutability of species.”

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

CAMBRIDGE, June 12, 1873.

MY DEAR DE CANDOLLE,--I must be in your eyes a disgracefully negligent correspondent and an ungrateful friend. I think, however, that I must have acknowledged the arrival of your volume which I received, I think, in March,--more likely late in February. The attempt at a perusal of it was when, on the 12th March, I went on to New York to pay the last duties to my venerable and good friend and associate, Dr. Torrey. I read a good part of the volume on the railway journeys, and planned a review of several of the articles. Then, a month later, I broke away from my laborious life here, and made a visit to my old friend Professor Henry, at Washington. I even went as much farther south, to Wilmington, North Carolina, where I met the spring in all its beauty, a month in advance of our tardy north. I collected a lot of live Dionæas, etc. I returned to a great accession of university work, my assistant being obliged to leave me on the 1st of May.

To return to your volume: I called Professor Henry’s attention to it, as one which would all through interest him much, if ever he finds time to read it. He will translate the article on the Language of the Twentieth Century for his Report, and perhaps others.

At a time when I was already overloaded, the death of dear Torrey has thrown some cares and extra work upon me. I have to carry through the press a report of his upon the plants collected in west North America, in Wilkes’s Expedition, which was drawn up, but never really finished, twelve years ago, and was called for just during Torrey’s last sickness, and to his annoyance, which I felt bound to relieve as well as I could.

Then, six weeks or more ago, died my next oldest friend and companion, Sullivant, making a sad spring and giving me a needed warning to make haste. He again leaves two unfinished works which I must see to, though Lesquereux will, I trust, edit them. Of one, indeed, he was to be joint author. The other, a second volume of the beautiful “Icones Muscorum,” is ready as to the plates, but not at all so, I learn, for the letterpress.

For myself, as I think I have already told you, this summer completing thirty-one years of professorial work in the university, I am relieved from further duties of instruction,--and of my salary. I shall not experience the full relief until the very close of summer. For, in the interest of this department of the university, and to leave it in proper working condition, I have undertaken a course of what we call university lectures,--meaning lectures intended the rather for others than members of the university,--and have opened the botanical laboratory to pupils, mainly teachers in schools, for the summer.[93] Considerable time must be given to them, but, after a few weeks, I hope to throw it mainly upon my assistant, Professor Goodale.

Professor Goodale, under appointment as assistant professor of vegetable physiology, will take the whole work of instruction in botany off my hands; but if a former assistant and pupil, Dr. Farlow, now with De Bary, proves capable of it, as I hope, he will, I trust, take up the work in systematic botany. His fancy, however, is for Cryptogamia.

Mr. Sereno Watson is the only one here to do work in systematic botany, but he will not teach. He and I are endeavoring to help out Professor Brewer in the “Flora of California,” which, to be done at all, must be pushed through at once. I have promised to do the Gamopetalæ, which come in the field I am striving to cover for the “Flora of North America.” That work I hope now to give myself to.

I ought to have taken this step several years ago; but I could not afford it, and it is only now that I have been able to bring the department here into the position in which I feel justified in resigning the care of it. I retain the charge of the herbarium, and I continue my residence in the house which is connected with it.

Dr. Torrey’s herbarium and library were made over to Columbia College, and will be kept up, although no professor will be appointed at present.

Mr. Sullivant’s bryological collections and library are to come here.

I send you by mail a copy of my biographical notices of Torrey and Sullivant; both from “American Academy Council Report of Proceedings,” and both printed in advance, in “Silliman’s Journal,” where you will see them.

By the way, I have resigned the chair of the American Academy, after ten years’ occupation, and it is taken by Mr. Adams, whom you know. The third class (classical and historical) takes its turn.

TO W. M. CANBY.

CAMBRIDGE, June 30, 1873.

MY DEAR CANBY,--My Dionæas grow finely, and are the delight of my heart.

Drosera longifolia, also cultivated, is almost as good a fly-catcher.

Now and then I see a little exudation inside base of hood of Sarracenia flava, which answers to what my Southern correspondent pointed out; but is not very marked....

CAMBRIDGE, July 7.

... I have also seen here that water is secreted in the pitcher of Sarr. flava before the lid is open.

But I have also seen some time ago, when the weather got rather warm, very minute globules like finest dew on the erect part of the lid, near base, inside. And, lately, during the very warm days, I found in some this increased, and the droplets running together into a clammy exudation. But I want to see more of it. I shall watch, as I get a chance, and the weather gets hot. Look at yours. See if there is anything of the sort in S. purpurea; I think not.

I have not the book yet. But I somehow understand that this exudation on the lid is mentioned in the English translation of Le Maout and Decaisne’s “General Treatise of Botany!” The French has it not. Very likely it has been found out by Darwin, who finds out everything!

... _Conundrum?_ Why does the Dionæa trap close only part way, so as to cross the bristles of edge only, at first, and afterwards close fully?

Darwin has hit it. I wonder you or I never thought of it.

A. G.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

CAMBRIDGE, October 27, 1873.

MY DEAR DE CANDOLLE,--If I were a better correspondent, I should have long ago thanked you for your interesting and welcome letter of August 11, from Samaden. I was in the Engadine when last in Switzerland, and got near the top of Piz Langarde, when a storm drove me back.

Your announcement leads me to expect soon the new (and alas, last!) volume of the “Prodromus.” Well, it must give you a huge sense of relief to have it off your hands; something like the relief I now feel at the termination, at the close of thirty-one years, of my professorial duties, upon which you felicitate me. On account of a summer course of instruction, which I felt bound to initiate for my successor, I did not really close my labors until the end of July. Since then I have been able to work at systematic botany very steadily. We took, my wife and I, a holiday of a fortnight, in which we visited friends on the Hudson River and its tributaries, at the close of September, just as the foliage was beginning to display the bright autumnal tints, which this year have been unusually gorgeous, and have not yet disappeared, although the leaves are now falling fast. The sight is most enjoyable to me in the earlier autumn, when the verdure still prevails and makes a setting for the red, yellow, and russet.

I am now deep in the Compositæ for the “California Flora” of my friend Brewer, and so am trying Bentham’s work. It generally holds good,--wonderfully so, considering its extent, and the comparatively short time he took for it.

Your agreeable volume of “Miscellanies” is now in the hands of your old friend and my neighbor, Jules Marcou; who asked to borrow it, having been unable to purchase a copy. It is reported out of print. I think I sent you a light article I wrote for the “Nation” last summer,--I believe in June,--in which I gave an abstract of your essay on the Dominant Language of the Twentieth Century. It has attracted considerable attention. I see that those who have studied the subject think that the increase of population in North America is not to go on at the rate it has been going; that the check is already apparent.

A week or two ago appeared in the “Nation” an article (sent to you last week by post), in which I had occasion to notice some other parts of your volume, at considerable length. I have also been tempted to give some account of your essay on Natural Selection as applied to man; but I find it would take me too much out of my own line, and absorb time which I cannot spare. Indeed, I have only looked over that essay, and am not qualified to abstract, still less to criticise it. The longest article of the volume, which gives the title, I have not given as much attention to as I ought, probably, or I should perhaps value it more highly. But it seems to me that membership in scientific academies--the three you take not excepted--is so largely affected by circumstance, irrespective of talent and of the value of work done, that one cannot very confidently base general conclusions upon the data. Yet I have no great confidence in my opinion. Anyway, the article is full of interesting matters....

What do you and Dr. Müller say to Bornet’s memoir, on the nature of lichens? His exposition is so clear that, if he is an honest and good investigator,--as I cannot well doubt,--his conclusions carry conviction.

My sheet fills, and leaves now barely room for Mrs. Gray’s messages of kindest remembrances to yourself and to Madame De Candolle, in which I beg to join. Long may you flourish, and much good work yet do. For one thing, pray print the list of botanical names!

Ever yours, A. GRAY.

November 26.

... I am going this morning to witness the nuptials of my colleague and friend Professor Sargent and a charming young lady of Boston; and, on the chance of their having a day in Geneva, I wish to introduce the happy couple to you and Madame De Candolle. They will tell you much of me, and of the satisfying and I trust useful sort of life I an now leading. Some evidence of renewed botanical activity in the form of a couple of botanical papers just issued here, too bulky to send well by post, I will cause to reach you by way of Paris.

Professor Sargent is given to horticulture and arboriculture. He not only takes charge of the university Botanic Garden, but also of a recent and noble foundation for an arboretum, from which much may in due time be expected.

It is most pleasant and hopeful when, as in the present instance, a young man of means and best social position chooses to devote his time and energies to practical scientific ends, rather than to business or pleasure. You are more accustomed to that at Geneva than we are here in America.

I know that, before this can reach you, I shall have occasion to write to you, and to announce the reception of the last volume of the “Prodromus,” now on the way to me. So I have only to add that I am always

Very sincerely yours, ASA GRAY.

TO CHARLES DARWIN.

May 12, 1874.

... I sent to Hooker to forward to you two articles in the “Nation,” on Insectivorous Plants, written to reclaim your work from Bennett, who began to appropriate it, etc., etc.

It is already leading to discovery. A physician in Carolina, a good observer, already writes me that in S. variolaris, the best of Sarracenias, he thinks he finds the watery liquid anæsthetic (??) and the sweet secretion not. But he says there is a line of sweet, a trail, running from the sweet rim down the edge of the wing outside nearly to the ground, which lures up ants (with which Wyman tells me the pitchers are crowded), just like the train of Indian corn which hunters scatter along the ground to lure wild turkeys into the trap! Does not that beat all!

Also my articles here resulted in the discovery related in the paper inclosed. The take-off of Thomson’s germs from another planet is good.

June 16.

... The gratification I feel in learning (by yours of the 3d) that you are pleased must, I am sure, exceed any satisfaction of yours in regard to my subdued and quiet article in “Nature.”[94] Lockyer, to my great surprise, applied to me for it, and of course I could not refuse. I think it will generally be regarded by scientific people as just and moderate.

Odd that you should not have recognized my hand from the first in the “Insectivorous Plants,” written, in fact, to vindicate your rights. The papers called forth a second hoax, as elaborate as the first, and much better done. I have no idea who wrote them.

You must, meanwhile, have received the article in the “Nation,” reviewing Dr. Hodge’s “What is Darwinism?” You see what uphill work I have in making a theist of you, “of good and respectable standing.”

Do hurry up the book about Drosera, etc. My plants of Sarracenia variolaris, having lost their spring growth in transmission, have not yet made any that is satisfactory. So I begged Dr. Mellichamp, who had sent me leaves with gorge sanded over at the sweet-secretion part, to send some for the trail. He wrote me it was too late in the season; they were all drying up. But this morning, with the inclosed postal card, came several with the sand sticking fairly well to the glutinous line, and I send you one of them. I wish I could send you Mellichamp’s long letters, about the two sorts of larvæ, that appropriate, one the upper, one the lower part of the pitcher.

My wife (who sends her love to you and yours) is much amused by your backgammon reminiscence. For the year past we have a way of getting on most peacefully. I sit by her side and play solitaire with two packs of cards, she looks on and helps, and when we don’t succeed there is nobody to “flare up” against but luck.

Ever yours, A. GRAY.

P. S.--I think I never sent you my felicitations upon your election as Foreign Honorary Member of American Academy Arts and Sciences.

We are proud to number you among the seventy-five (too many). And, I may tell you, only two negative votes were cast, one by an Academician who made a speech on the occasion, to which nobody vouchsafed a word of reply.

A. G.

CAMBRIDGE, June 19, 1874.

MY DEAR DARWIN,--Your second letter reached me last evening, and this morning came from the publishers some copies of the number of “Nature.” You seem as pleased and are as ingenuous as a maiden when she first finds out that she has an admirer!

Now I am a little vexed, as I am apt to be when I let anything be printed without reading the proof myself. Some one has doctored one sentence, and made it say the contrary to what I wrote, and to what is true; I make the reclamation on a separate sheet: and also another, which may be typographical, but which I am confident I could not have written; I surely wrote “_to_ many,” not “_in_ many.”

My claim for you about teleology I have made several times, in “Silliman’s Journal,”[95] and elsewhere. It is a matter on which I have a good deal insisted.

Yours affectionately, ASA GRAY.

P. S.--My _point_ (which is _blunted_) was to show how very near Brown came to “hitting the nail on the head” without hitting it, striking wild instead!

A. G.

TO W. M. CANBY.

July 6, 1874.

I am glad if you have Darlingtonia in a state to examine. I have some young leaves growing, which show nothing yet. Mellichamp will send me a paper, which I will read at Hartford next month. Won’t you post up Darlingtonia also--getting what you can from Lemmon. He has not written to me about it. My young fish-tails show no exudation yet; and they are colored like the rest of the leaf.

Ever yours, A. GRAY.

BOTANIC GARDEN, July 8, 1874.

DEAR CANBY,--Yours of 7th instant received. I thought you had live Darlingtonia. Of ours the old plant has died after starting three new offsets. But the growing leaves are small. If it goes on I may do something. Thus far I have detected no water in the tubes, nor any sticky secretion. But I shall slit one soon. Make notes for Hartford.

You have not guessed the conundrum, though you have made a step in distinguishing the two different movements. I’ll tell you. It is to strain out the small flies. Do you take? Or want details? I send you Darwin’s late letters,--one came this evening. We have lost all those Pinguiculas.

Can we get any from Wilmington now? Are there any near Dr. Mellichamp? You may forward Darwin’s last letter to him and set him to observing,--collecting and preserving leaves with insects stuck fast, and margin turned over. See if ours turn over the edge!

How does D. find out they digest?

July 14.

When Dionæa is irritated by a small fly, he has plenty of time to escape through the meshes, and the leaf soon opens, ready for better luck next time. Think what a waste if the leaf had to go through all the process of secretion, etc., taking so much time, all for a little gnat. It would not pay. Yet it would have to do it except for this arrangement to let the little flies escape. But when a bigger one is caught he is sure for a good dinner.

That is real Darwin. I just wonder you and never thought of it. But _he_ did.

Pretty good,--the solar protector! So Fendler is near you. Remember me to the good fellow.

I wish he had let Cosmical Science alone! But now he never will, and is a gone goose.

Ever yours, A. GRAY.

Dr. Gray, being sent away for a cough, made a journey to Apalachicola, Florida, going by Washington, Augusta and Tallahassee, of which and his successful search for Torreya he wrote a lively account for the “American Agriculturist,” republished in his “Scientific Papers,” selected by C. S. Sargent.

He was especially interested in seeing Torreya, a fine tree named for his friend Dr. Torrey, which is only known in one or two localities in Florida, on the banks of the Apalachicola River; and with some trouble he found it growing, and had the satisfaction of hoping that it was valued enough to be preserved. There is a second Torreya growing in Japan, a third Torreya in California, and a fourth in China. “But,” as Dr. Gray says, “any species of very restricted range may be said to hold its existence by a precarious tenure. The known range of this species is not more than a dozen miles in length along these bluffs, although Dr. Chapman has heard of its growing farther south, where the bluff trends away from the river.”

He went to Stone Mountain in Georgia, a curiously bare, immense mass of stone, one side too steep to climb, but having in clefts some rare plants growing. From Chattanooga he made an excursion up Lookout Mountain, interesting from its reminiscences of “Sherman’s March,” and also the habitat of some rare plants he was so fortunate as to find.

TO WILLIAM M. CANBY.

BOTANIC GARDEN, March 13, 1875.

MY DEAR CANBY,--I do not get on, and shall not in this melting snow and bad season.

I yield to advice, and Mrs. Gray and I are going South,--I do not know where, but somewhere, taking my vacation now instead of in summer. I want to find now--and reach comfortably--what we have here at the first of June.

You know somewhat of the South; I think I should like best to get to Apalachicola and St. John’s River and see Torreya. But it seems far off.

I want to recruit, and to be good for something, which at present I am not!

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, WASHINGTON, April 25, 1875.

MY DEAR CANBY,--Well, we have got back again, so far; and here, I think, we shall stick for a few days. Had we anticipated so much cold and backwardness, we should have stayed south longer.

Apalachicola was heavenly. But at Macon, coming north, we struck the cold wave; came on by Atlanta (Stone Mountain), Chattanooga (roots of Silene rotundifolia), and thence via Lynchburg straight here. I found Torreya, and had a good time with it. Lots of detail to tell you....

I am lazy in traveling, or I would have written you. Then I have been pretty busy, too, and have done several hard days’ work, causing much but healthy fatigue.

CAMBRIDGE, May 8.

We are at home, with delightful memories of you and yours.

I think I hinted to you that I found two Crassulaceæ on Stone Mountain, both annual.

One, most abundant on the lower slopes, is glaucous-green, and has bright white flowers. The pods show it to be a true Sedum. I send a small specimen. Note the blunt pods and short style. This--as shown by a bit of fruit in my herbarium--is Sedum pusillum, Michx.!

The other is dull purple in general hue, smaller, grows only well up the mountain, abounds in a small form on the very top, and is rather later; but I make out the dehiscence, and it is Diamorpha pusilla, Nutt.!

The specimens you sent to me are this, larger and later than any I got. But, as you directed me to the base of the mountain for Diamorpha, you must have got this too. Your specimens have full-grown fruit. Look at them and see if the larger ones have not the regular dehiscence down the side of Sedum, and let me know.

May 12, 1875.

Thanks for your letter and the Sedum.

Now for another find. The moment I set eyes on the Arenaria of Stone Mountain, I said, Ho! here is A. brevifolia, Nuttall, of which I had only a single stalk in herbarium. Comparing now, I was right, and Nuttall says his specimen is from Tatnall County (which is strange, that being in southeast Georgia). The question remains, Is it only a low-country form of Arenaria glabra?

Your specimen--with fruit--and M. A. Curtis’s[96] from the mountains of Carolina, being in the same state, compare pretty well. I should unite them, only the seeds are different, Stone Mountain plant half the size, and shape rather different. But please rattle me out some real ripe seeds of your plant, for further comparison.

At Stone Mountain I looked rather for small specimens to match with A. brevifolia. I send you a bit.

I have sent the Sedum and Diamorpha yesterday to Paris, to compare and see if both are in Herbarium Michaux.

I am proud of my little discovery!

Ever yours, ASA GRAY.

TO R. W. CHURCH.

CAMBRIDGE, June 22, 1875.

I must indulge, on its rising, the impulse to communicate with you, which a letter from Miss P. to my wife, just received, has awakened.

If I go on as I have been going, we shall come to know nothing of each other....

She will have told you of our loss in the death of Mrs. Loring. I never knew a woman fuller of charity, humility, and good works.

If there were time for a gossiping letter I or Mrs. Gray would give you some account of a trip which we made to Florida this spring. An annoying cough, and a chronic catarrh,--the consequence of a trying winter, acting upon old susceptibilities,--distressed my friends more than it did me. So, yielding to their solicitations, off we went, about the middle of March, to Washington, visiting old friends; to Augusta and Savannah, Georgia; and thence Apalachicola, a now almost deserted, but once flourishing town, on the Gulf of Mexico. We met the spring in Georgia; in Florida we were in early summer, about like our own middle June.

The botanizing was delicious, very many nice things which I had never seen growing before; our quarters comfortable, and the fare exceptionally excellent. East Florida, which has large hotels, was full of invalids and pleasure travelers, making a crowd not to our liking. I had special botanical objects leading me to west Florida, an out-of-the-world region, where we had everything to ourselves. We were late for the oranges, gleaning the last half dozen from the trees of our friends. My throat is so sensitive that I dare say we shall need to go again next March, and earlier than before. So, if you will arrange to join us, I can promise you a pleasant time, and a real rest.

October 11, 1875.

What a capital article it is which your friend Lord Blachford has published in the “Contemporary” for September, on Huxley’s Automata hypothesis!

It is long since I have read anything which pleased me more.

Do you know who is P. C. W., in Article 6, of the same number? He makes one suggestion of some value, that I some day want to follow up.

I am grinding away at my work in the usual manner. We are just in the glory of the glowing autumnal foliage, and making ready for winter. If health holds out, here we expect to remain, at least till spring....

TO G. FREDERICK WRIGHT.[97]

BOTANIC GARDEN, July 1, 1875.

DEAR MR. WRIGHT,--Thanks for your letter. It may be that the time has come in which a collection of my popular articles on Darwinism, etc., would be useful.[98] Your thinking so would go far to make me believe it. But then, you are one of the moderate number of people who have carefully read them, and one of the few who well understand and appreciate them,--because you have given the subject an attentive consideration,--and who are awake to the harm that comes from theologians and ministers denouncing a view that scientific men are more and more receiving as probably true. I should like to know how Professor Park regards the proposition.

I will say that while I am not unwilling to collect them for reprinting, in case they are called for, it would not quite do for me, in the position I occupy (I mean as a man of science), to republish them in a collected form, without entering anew and further into some of the pending questions; to do which would seriously interrupt the legitimate work which I have in hand, and to which I am deeply pledged. I suppose I could add, and should be disposed to add, a note or two,--especially one upon teleology from a Darwinian point of view,--a subject upon which there is something still to be said, though I do not see the way to say it conclusively. You will probably do it better than I ever can.

At present, I think I should let them alone, unless there comes what you ministers recognize as a call for them, and such a call I should defer to.

If such as Professor Park and yourself were to ask it, I would see if a publisher could be got to take them up. But you don’t know how I dislike to have my name bruited about.

Dr. Peabody was very glad of the relief you gave him on Sunday week, and like myself was greatly pleased with your thoughtful discourse.

August 14, 1875.

... The important thing to do, is to develop aright evolutionary teleology, and to present the argument for design from these exquisite adaptations in such a way as to make it tell on both sides; with Christian men, that they may be satisfied with, and perchance may learn to admire, Divine works effected step by step, if need be, in a system of nature; and the antitheistic people, to show that without the implication of a superintending wisdom nothing is made out, and nothing credible.

Now for a month or two, I am pressed by daily technical work to the extreme, and get no chance to turn these matters over in my mind.

I don’t want to handle this argument in such a way that it can be gainsaid, nor without touching the very point. May I ask you to help me? You see how the question stands. How shall we best handle it?...

September 14, 1875.

... I have been crowded and much absorbed with my part of the California botany; get put back, by new collections, and have had the printer on my heels, which is not pleasant.

I have to drive with all my might, and am not yet clear, though I trust the worst is past. I get so fagged that when I sit down to Darwin’s “Insectivorous Plants,” by way of relaxation, of an evening, I fall asleep over it. And so have not finished that book yet, as it cannot be read with the eyes shut. I put off thought of all but my daily work till my task is done.

I thought I might have got up to see you, but I cannot now.

I see in the last “Nation” an article, which was evidently to have been continued, by Chauncey Wright, in which he points out clearly the essential difference between Darwinism, which is scientific, and Spencerism, which is “philosophical.” Save the mark!

Poor Wright,--your namesake--died suddenly of apoplexy, Sunday morning. He was a stanch Millite, and very acute and clear-headed.

September 15.

... A minister out in Illinois has written me, taking me seriously to task for altering my opinion after the age of forty-five, and for abetting disorder, by supporting theories that disturb the harmony of opinion that ought to prevail among scientific men.

He is one of those people who think that if you shut your eyes hard, it will answer every purpose; indeed, from the ease with which he confutes Darwinism, I suppose he finds no call even to shut his eyes.

November 10.

... Species, as I have said (in “Silliman’s Journal” articles) are not facts or things, but judgments, and, of course, fallible judgments; how fallible the working naturalist knows and feels more than any one else.

That the pages of a Flora or Fauna should give the idea of fixity and clear limitation which does not well or wholly represent the reality, is natural enough; is, indeed, inevitable. The object in these works is to set forth the differences, and put them in the strongest and clearest light, so that the forms may be readily discriminated. The nearer two forms are alike, the more pains the naturalist takes to set forth the differences, while the likeness “goes without saying,” and is therefore overlooked by the outsider, though it may have been almost an even chance that the describer merged the two in one.

The thoughtful and experienced naturalist does not get a wrong impression from all this, but the outsider almost certainly will.

A. G.

January 14, 1876.

DEAR MR. WRIGHT,--Thanks for your line of the 8th.

By this week’s “Nation,”[99] you see that, long as the talk is, I have not yet touched the critical question, nor have I yet got an opportunity to apply myself to it. But I hope to do so soon.

Meanwhile, the number of the “Westminster Review,” which you called my attention to, has passed through my hands in our book club, and I shall soon have it in my hands again. It makes a very strong presentation, and the question is, how its points are to be met on purely scientific grounds. If I can meet them fairly, and reëstablish the evidence of design on the basis it ought to stand upon, I shall be satisfied and happy. Anyway, it is a help to me to have this able presentation brought before me....

May 21.

...I have here and there seen references to St. Augustine as maintaining views of indirect creation, such as now would be termed, or might be termed, evolutionary. Can you conveniently put me in the way of understanding his ideas? It is matter for you to work up in your article on Calvinism and Evolution....

December 20.

... Do you see No. 1 of the new agnostic weekly, “Evolution,” and its review of “Darwiniana”? It insists that such a world as ours is too full of imperfections to have had any intellectual originator....

TO JOHN H. REDFIELD.

July 1, 1876.

DEAR REDFIELD,--I doubt if you know that the late John Stuart Mill, the philosopher, was a keen botanist. His herbarium, rich in European plants and with a good many Indian, etc. (small specimens from Royle, etc.), was given by his stepdaughter to Kew. But Hooker asked leave, after taking a certain amount, to present the rest to me, with leave to choose where all I did not care to have incorporated in the herbarium here should go to. I think it should go to a public herbarium, and as I think the Academy’s is not supplied well with European species of at all recent date, or recent collecting, perhaps it should go to you....

TO MRS. GRAY.

June 11, 1876.

... To get my train yesterday I had to leave the house at one. Dom Pedro till sixteen minutes of that, with Eliot, A. Agassiz, and two Brazilians. They came to the house, the door being open, and I received them in the library.... Sargent was with me to take him off my hands when I had to go. We treated him as we should any gentleman, though I believe I once addressed him as Your Majesty when flourishing the poison-bottle under his nose. He is a large, square-built, good-looking man of about my age, I think. Never did I have more questions to answer in ten minutes, nor questions more direct and to the point. Taken into the herbarium, he recognized what it was, complimented me by saying that my name was a well-known one (I suppose Agassiz had put him up to that), and I returned by saying that, in at least one case, we were members of the same botanical society.

“How many species of plants have you specimens of?” About 65,000.

“How do you arrange them?” Cases opened, and I began to show him.

“Please let me see some plant.”

I pulled out the genus cover first at hand, which happened to be European Saxifrages; opened. He took up a sheet.