Chapter V (2)

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

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

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

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

TO R. W. CHURCH.

Christmas Eve, 1853.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

7th December, 1853.

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

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

TO CHARLES WRIGHT.

May 21, 1853.

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

CAMBRIDGE, February 19, 1854.

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

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

I forgot to tell you, too, that Thurber[27] called on me and offered his plants collected under Bartlett. I have written out the greater part up to the end of Compositæ, my old sticking-place, a number of new things, mostly from deeper down in Sonora than you went, and in southwest California. Beyond doubt Torrey will work up a part. I shall merely furnish characters and botanical remarks to Thurber, and let him do all the rest of the talk. Bartlett is still in hopes that the Senate will print a great report for him. I greatly doubt if they do. If so, Thurber’s botany will go as an appendix. If not, he will make a memoir of the things up to Compositæ, and the striking things beyond, and afterwards I may lick up the rest in the general continuation of “Plantæ Wrightianæ,” etc.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TO W. J. HOOKER.

CAMBRIDGE, March 28, 1854.

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

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

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

TO GEORGE THURBER.

CAMBRIDGE, 20th April, 1854.

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

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

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

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

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

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

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

CAMBRIDGE, June 1, 1854.

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

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

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

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

From the family of the late M. de Jussieu, you should receive a copy of the “Epistolæ Linnæano-Jussieuanæ,” with our late friend’s notes, etc., the last scientific work of his too short life.[28] I intended to send you a copy myself, but at the request of M. Ramond I surrendered the small extra edition to his charge for distribution. In due time you will have a copy in the volume of the “Memoirs of the American Academy” also. My daguerreotype of M. Jussieu was most opportunely taken. His family, having no recent portrait, have solicited the loan of it, to aid in the preparation of an engraved likeness; and I have placed it in their hands.

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

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

ASA GRAY.

TO W. J. HOOKER.

CAMBRIDGE, February 5, 1855.

MY DEAR SIR WILLIAM,--The inclosed, from our good friend Dr. Short,[29] and the box it advises, came while I was at Washington, from which I have just returned. Mrs. Gray and I have enjoyed our month’s holiday very much; though I was kept busy enough, having to deliver nine lectures in three weeks. We had arranged to have a few days at New York, in which I could work with Dr. Torrey; but the good man was called off to Washington on business just as I left that place, and we crossed en route, and I came on home, in consequence....

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

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

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

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

So they would talk about the tree that was felled being 3,000 years old (and took in Lindley), whereas it was not quite 1,300! It appears to grow much faster than S. sempervirens.[30] ...

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

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

May 29, 1855.

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

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

Your sincere and faithful, ASA GRAY.

TO CHARLES WRIGHT.

August 28, 1855.

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

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

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

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

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

What I am about doing, I can always talk largely of. I am preparing a new edition of the “Manual of Botany of the Northern United States,” and a new elementary work[31] of a familiar character, to go with it, separate and with original pictures on wood by Sprague, and I am to finish the “Flora” volume and “Plantæ Wrightianæ” with it. I have determined Berlandier’s plants up to end of Compositæ. Also I have done, along with Torrey, the botany of several expeditions across the continent for railroad surveys, which are soon to be published. Work goes slowly and I grow old. This little holiday will not be a bad thing for me, though it puts me back a little.

TO W. J. HOOKER.

CAMBRIDGE, October 23, 1855.

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

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

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

When I send the package from Holton,[32] I wish also to send you live seedlings of a palm from Sonora, Mexico, raised from seeds gathered by Thurber, and one or two other things.

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

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

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

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

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

At any rate, her journal will be piquant.

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

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

18th October, 1855.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

October 27, 1855.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ASA GRAY.

TO W. J. HOOKER.

CAMBRIDGE, February 25, 1856.

MY DEAR SIR WILLIAM,--Holton is bringing out a book upon New Granada which will be interesting....

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

I want to send you a book by a young friend of ours, Olmsted, on the seaboard slave States,[33] an admirable volume, full of information, and lively withal. I wait for an opportunity. Lady Hooker will be interested in it. Our united warm regards to her.

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

June 30, 1856.

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

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

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

May 25, 1857.

I hear with delight that you are meditating a trip to America, and I write forthwith to express my own and Mrs. Gray’s and my good father-in-law’s earnest hope that you will come over, even if it be for a few weeks only. The rest of the voyage cannot but be useful to so busy a person as you constantly are, and a run through the country, and a sight of the Yankee world, would interest you. At the Montreal scientific meeting you would see several old friends and many new ones. Torrey, Greene, Darlington,[34] James,[35] etc., would be half frantic with pleasure at the thought of seeing you; so it will not do to hint at such a thing, until you give me authority; and as for my wife and me, we will look after you like dutiful children, will go with you to Niagara, or to Lake Superior, if you will go so far, for there is nothing would give us so much pleasure as a visit from you; and if you would bring Lady Hooker or Mrs. Evans, or both, with you, it would be charming. The voyage is nothing to speak of, traveling here is easy and rapid, although not so very comfortable, as in England, and a good deal of the country can be seen in a few weeks without much fatigue. Pray do come, and exceedingly gratify,

Your affectionate and faithful A. GRAY.

TO JAMES D. DANA.

December 13, 1856.

MY DEAR DANA,--I duly received the sheets I asked for.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yours faithfully, A. GRAY.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

March 26, 1857.

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

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

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

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

TO GEORGE BENTHAM.

May 4, 1857.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TO R. W. CHURCH.

CAMBRIDGE, May 15, 1857.

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

Among them is one I have taken the liberty to address to you, a copy of a very elementary book[36] I have prepared as an introduction to my favorite science, finding there was no one in use here which I thought fit to put into the hands of young beginners. Here botany is taught, somehow or other, in most schools, and generally by incompetent teachers from wretched books, i. e., those used in the ordinary schools and for young people.

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

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

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

TO JAMES D. DANA.

November 7, 1857.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TO W. J. HOOKER.

CAMBRIDGE, December 6, 1857.

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

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

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

TO GEORGE BENTHAM.

November 16, 1857.

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