chapter i. What a charming book it is! You are right in issuing it in
this form. It would be a sin not to do so.
I fear, though, that no publisher would reprint it here; though I may,
on reading farther, conclude to offer it to the Appletons, who should
have the refusal. But it will surely be popular in England, where
orchids are popular and the species known to most intelligent and
educated people. I hope soon to get the other sheets. I am perfectly
delighted with O. pyramidalis, and must extract the whole account of
its fertilization for “Silliman’s Journal.”
Our only orchis, that is, O. spectabilis, I brought last summer from
western New York, and planted. I shall in a week have three or four
spikes coming into flower, and I will cover one and leave the others
exposed. They are in a wooded part of the garden, like their natural
habitat. The rest of our Ophrydeæ are Habenarias (Platanthera).
I must recur to your letter about Cypripedium and see what you wanted of
it, that is, what observation.
If there be any adaptation, be it ever so pretty, I shall never see it
without your direction. What a skill and genius you have for these
researches! Even for the structure of the flower of the Ophrydeæ I have
to-night learned more than I ever knew before.
TO A. DE CANDOLLE.
CAMBRIDGE, April 26, 1861.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--My duties in the university at this season are very
pressing. Besides, we are now opening a war, upon the determination of
which our very existence depends, and upon which we are to concentrate
all our strength and soul, so I have no time nor heart to write of
botany just now....
Ever, dear De Candolle, yours most cordially,
ASA GRAY.
December 16.
We do not often exchange letters now, and in these for us trying times
in the United States, though far removed from the actual scenes of war,
and not much interrupted in my botanical studies, except by distracting
thoughts, I write as few letters as I can. The unfriendly attitude of
England gives us much concern. Were it not for that, it is thought we
should soon put an end to our rebellion. But I will not write of such
matters now.
July 2, 1862.
No fear about our army, now so great. It is largely composed of
materials such as nothing but a high sense of duty could keep for a year
in military life. It will dissolve like last winter’s snow when no more
needed.
While I write, a great battle is in progress, decisive if we gain it and
take the rebel capital, simply prolonging the strife if we do not. We
can raise at once another army if need be; and yet another. Indeed
300,000 more men are now to be accepted, to recruit our ranks and make a
sure thing of the result.
Confident of our cause, we expect confidently the favor of
Providence....
What a charming book is that of Darwin on orchid fertilization!
TO CHARLES WRIGHT.
CAMBRIDGE, April 17, 1862.
I am at work in college now, you know, and it is very hard work. This
last vacation I had to make a new edition and new additions to my
“Manual,” etc., and to do it in a hurry, and I have at length, for the
first time, found out that I am growing old. In fact I broke down under
it, and have injured my health a little.... I doubt if I ever recover
the spring and vim of former times. But we shall see....
My hard work has got correspondence all horridly behindhand, and
determined me to draw in my horns, and drop a good deal of it. My desk
has long been so covered deep with unanswered letters, etc., that I have
abandoned it, and now sit over on the other side of the table.
If I sit down and answer a letter right off the day it comes, as I am
now doing with yours, and as I do with purely business letters, etc.,
then it is safe. If I add it to the heap, it is a gone case, and I fear
will never be really answered.
Eaton, too, as you know, has been very hard worked, in his father’s
office.
Well, there is no State now in some part of which the star-spangled
banner does not float. Lincoln is a trump, a second Washington, steady,
conservative, no fanatical abolitionist. Foote, of your State of
Connecticut, is putting down his foot on the Mississippi. McClellan is
to fight a great battle at Yorktown. Another bloody battle may be fought
near Corinth, Mississippi. New Orleans will soon be ours, please God,
and then this wicked rebellion will be done for. I pray God I may live
to see the end of it, and the States brought back, quietly if they will,
forcibly if they must.
I know it will rejoice your heart to see the thing done. And it will be
worth all it costs.
Come now, here is a good long letter for a man as tired as I to write,
who has been five or six hours in lecture-room, working hard.
August 1.
Here is a bit of reading for you,--substitute for letters, which in
truth I have not surfeited you with lately. Who can write letters in
these trying times?...
Last spring my health felt pretty seriously impaired. But by end of
June I was able to diminish my college work a little, and take the rest
easier, and so now I feel very much better, more like my old self, and I
am beginning to clear off my table that I may get at work again on that
everlasting South Pacific Exploring Expedition.
There is a charming book out, by Darwin, on the fertilization of orchids
by insects. It will open your eyes to most curious things. I have
verified much myself here, and made observations which Darwin regards as
very interesting. I send you a copy of the book through Eaton, as a
present.
Any observations or notes you make I will send to Darwin.
TO CHARLES DARWIN.
July 2, 1862.
I am glad if my off-hand orchid notes interest you, or prove of the
least use. I am daily expecting a copy to send you of my notice of the
early chapters of your book. I will continue in the ensuing number. And
whatever of the notes I send you seem to you worth touching upon, you
have only to indicate them, and send back my memoranda, and I will take
them up. But as to Cypripediums, I should like to have an opportunity of
examining them (except C. acaule) more at large, and growing.
A week from to-morrow, I expect to be able to leave Cambridge, to go
down, with my examination papers to read, to my beau-père’s place on the
shore, for a few days. Then I will try to look up and bring home living
Rhexia Virginica; and also I expect to have a look at Calopogon
pulchellus, with its strong bearded labellum. And I hope it will not be
too late to get plenty of Mitchella repens, which my pupils do not
bring me in as they ought. I want to see if long-styled stigma and short
differ, and also the pollen of the two, as they do in Houstonia, of
which I hope I sent you Rothrock’s[52] observations. At least I will
send when he has completed them.
Precocious fertilization in the bud was much noticed here very long ago
by Torrey, in Viola, Specularia, etc., etc., also in Impatiens, about
which see my “Genera Illustrata,” volume ii. I once mentioned it to you
as good evidence of close fertilization. As to pollen-tubes of such, I
have no observations of my own, but a memory or fancy that they were
shown to me by Torrey. I will ask him, and have him look at Specularia.
As to the French lady’s translation and commentary on the “Origin,” I am
not so much surprised. As I view it, there are only two sides to the
main question. Very likely she takes one side in a thorough-going and
consistent manner; and either she is right, or I am right, i. e., there
is design in nature, or there is not. The no-design view, if one can
bring himself to entertain it, may well enough lead to all she says, and
we may very much admire how collision and destruction of least-favored
brings about apparently orderly results,--apparent contrivances or
adaptation of means to ends. On the other hand, the implication of a
designing mind must bring with it a strong implication of design in
matters where we could not directly prove it.
If you grant an intelligent designer anywhere in Nature, you may be
confident that he has had something to do with the “contrivances” in
your orchids.
I have just received and glanced at Bentham’s address, and am amused to
see how your beautiful flank movement with the Orchid book has nearly
overcome his opposition to the “Origin.”
The military simile above leads me to speak of your wonder that I can
think of science at all in the midst of war. Well, first, we get used to
it. Second, we need something to turn to, and happy are they who,
forbidden to engage personally in the war (as I am ever itching to do),
have something to turn to. Third, I do not do much, do nothing, in fact,
except my college duties now for months, and that is the reason I have
time to write to you, and be interested in all your doings.
If you suppose everything is paralyzed and desolate here, and the
country greatly put back, read a very sensible letter of an Englishman
in the “Spectator” of June 7. It is very just and true. We shall
recuperate fast enough, and be better off than ever, as much prosperity
as is good for us, and more solid, more independent, more
self-contained, which is our great desideratum. Free trade be blowed; we
must needs have high duties on imports, and it is better that we should.
By these and by direct taxes--the tax-bill just passed--we shall have to
pay over largely. Very well.
Just at present our prospects (viz., evening of July 3) are looking
badly enough. McClellan has clearly been overmatched and driven to the
wall, after very obstinate fighting, with very heavy loss on both sides.
Whether it is retrievable with reinforcements, or whether the whole
campaign has to be begun again against Richmond, is not yet clear.
Anyway we have got to put shoulder to the wheel anew, and it may be
done, we suppose, more easily and far more promptly than last year. All
we ask is that Europe shall let us alone.
Enough for to-day.
PROVIDENCE, R. I., July 29, 1862.
No more news in the orchids line. I am making two or three days of
holiday, and yesterday I found a few specimens of Gymnadenia tridentata.
But the flowers are too small to examine well with a hand lens. If they
keep, I will take them back to Cambridge in a day or two and see what to
make of them....
As to the country, you will see by this time that we have not the least
idea of abandoning the struggle. We have learned only that there is no
use trying any longer to pick up our eggs gently, very careful not to
break any. The South forces us at length to do what it would have been
more humane to have done from the first, i. e., to act with vigor, not
to say rigor.
We shall be complained of for our savageness, no doubt, whereas we feel
that our error has been all the other way. But the independence, the
total indifference to English feeling which you recommended last year,
has come at length; now we care nothing what Mrs. Grundy says.
CAMBRIDGE, September 22, 1862.
Your pleasant epistles of August 21 and September 4 are to be
acknowledged, with thanks. But I have nothing in particular to
communicate, except our hearty congratulations that your boy and Mrs.
Darwin are recovering so well.
Tell Leonard that I was pleased both with his attention in writing and
with the ocular proof of his convalescence in his being able so soon to
use a pen. His requests shall be kept in view; the five-cent stamp I
send now; dare say I shall sometime pick up the thirty and ninety,
though I never saw the latter, nor the twelve, twenty, and twenty-four
on envelopes (the twenty-four cent he must have already, as it is often
used on my envelopes to you).
Bravo for Horace, whose illustration of Natural Selection as to the
adders is capital. A chip of the old block, he evidently is.
I told you that Rothrock had gone to the war, and perhaps has already
been under fire; probably not. I had intended that next spring he should
do up Houstonia more perfectly, and work up this and some related
matters for his thesis when he comes up for examination. But all this is
broken up by his enlistment....
I have been lazy about all my writing, working all day at dry and dull
systematic botany, which you anathematize. But if I get time to turn it
over, I will say a few words on the last chapter of your Orchid book.
But it opens up a knotty sort of question about accident or design,
which one does not care to meddle with much until one can feel his way
further than I can.
October 4, 1862.
I have just been reading Max Müller’s lecture on the Science of Language
with much interest. But perhaps what has interested me most is, after
all, his perfect appreciation and happy use of Natural Selection, and
the very complete analogy between diversification of species and
diversification of language. I can hardly think of any publication which
in England could be more useful to your cause than this volume is, or
should be. I see also with what great effect you may use it in our
occasional discussion about design; indeed I hardly see how to avoid
conclusion adverse to special design, though I think I see indications
of a way out.
Depend on it, Max Müller will be of real service to you.
October 13.
I have been so much occupied that I deferred to the last moment to write
out my second notice of your Orchid book for “Silliman’s Journal.” I
wrote out Saturday evening what I could, and to-day have finished and
sent off my manuscript to New Haven. The greater part consists of a
record of some of my observations last summer, very hurriedly penned,
and sent off. I trust you will be pleased, and will think that my little
contributions cannot be better hatched than under your wings.
I hope that my young correspondent is fast recovering strength. Tell him
that I have no more stamps for him yet, but shall pick up his desiderata
one of these days.
I have some nice live roots of Cypripedium, two or three species to send
you, and mean to send Mitchella.
How Hooker does praise up your book, in the “Gardener’s Chronicle!”
CAMBRIDGE, November 10, 1862.
It is refreshing to me that you find the special correspondent of the
“Times” detestable.
Your comments upon our affairs always show such a good spirit that you
need not fear even my wife’s “indignation.”
We are sorry that you suffer in England; but you must blame the rebels
for it, not us, and your Manchester people should have looked earlier to
India for cotton.
You don’t see, as you would if here, the total impossibility of coming
to any terms of peace with the South, based on their independence.
Before that can be they or we must be thoroughly beaten. You can’t be
expected to see too, what seems plain to me, that you English would give
us no end of trouble if we attempt a piecemeal existence. We must be
strong enough to keep any Old-World power at bay. Then we shall behave
pretty well, on the whole; surely so when the North is dominant and is
fairly treated. “Seizing on Canada.” What do we want of Canada? When the
South was aggressive and making slave States we often looked to the
peaceful acquisition of Canada as desirable, as a counterpoise. But when
we had “changed all that,”--and it is changed, and slavery limited, past
all doubt, however the combat ends,--we no longer have use or need of
Canada. If we get set up again, we have work enough at home, and our
hands full for years; we shall be strong for defense, but weak for
aggression. The ill-feeling to England will die out when we are well
able to defend ourselves and our home interests.
It does seem that all England wishes us to be weak and divided; perhaps
that is good national policy. But the more that is so, the more
necessary it is for us to vindicate our integrity, at whatever cost. Let
us have it out now, even at the cost of ten times what it has cost so
far.
I never thought anything of American institutions for England.
Aristocracy is a natural and needful appendage to monarchy. You work out
your own type, and you will liberalize fast enough, and leave us to do
ours. We’ll make it do, with some jangling.
I wish we could be shut up, like the Japanese of old, for ten or twenty
years, only with a weekly mail from you and Dr. Hooker. Well, well!
Ever yours cordially,
ASA GRAY.
November 24.
About Max Müller; surely you can’t wonder that the attempt to account
for the “first origin of language,” or of anything else, should be the
“least satisfactory.”
The use that I fancied could be made of Max Müller’s book, or rather of
the history of language, is something more than illustration, but only a
little more; that is, you may point to analogies of development and
diversification of language, of no value at all in evidence in support
of your theory, but good and pertinent as rebutting objections urged
against it.
Bishop Colenso’s book will make a noise in England; indeed, I have only
read the notice in the “Athenæum.”
You detest the spirit of the “Times” quoad U. S. The “Athenæum” is just
as bad in its little penny-trumpet way, every chance it can get, from
the first. Can you be much surprised that we return dislike with
interest? But we are pleased to find there are sensible and fair
writers, such as Cairnes and Mill.
No, dear Darwin, we don’t scorn your joining in the prayer that we daily
offer that “God would help our poor country,” and I know and appreciate
your honest and right feeling.
I see also, from the English papers I read, how you must picture us as
in the extreme of turmoil and confusion and chaos. But if you were here,
you would open your eyes to see everything going on quietly, hopefully,
and comfortably as possible. I suppose we do not appreciate our
miseries. We accept our misfortunes and adversities, but mean to
retrieve them, and would sink all that we have before giving up. We work
hard, and persevere, and expect to come out all right, to lay the
foundations of a better future, no matter if they be laid in suffering.
That will not hurt us now, and may bring great good hereafter.
I never saw, and have scarcely heard of, Miss Cooper’s book you ask
after. She is the daughter of the late J. Fenimore Cooper, the novelist.
The village she describes must be Cooperstown, New York, in the county
adjacent to that in which I was brought up,--a region which, every time
I visit it, I say it is the fairest of lands, and the people the
happiest.
Oh, as to the weeds; Mrs. Gray says she allows that our weeds give up to
yours. Ours are modest, woodland, retiring things, and no match for the
intrusive, pretentious, self-asserting foreigners. But I send you seeds
of one native weed which, corrupted by bad company, is as nasty and
troublesome as any I know, namely, Sicyos angulatus; also of a more
genteel Cucurbitacea, Echinocystis lobata (the larger seeds). Upon
these, especially upon the first, I made my observation of tendrils
coiling to the touch. Put the seeds directly into the ground; they will
come up in spring, in moist garden soil.
My observations were made on a warm, sunny day. I doubt if you have
warmth and sunshine enough in England to get up a sensible movement.
My note about them is in “Proceedings of the American Academy,” iv., p.
98, reprinted in “Silliman’s Journal,” March, 1859, p. 277. I must own
that upon casually taking them up since, I never have obtained such very
good results as upon two days of August, 1858.
Upon gourds affecting each other’s fruits, I have made no observations
at all. I have only referred to that, as a well-known thing, at least,
of common repute here, and then referred to maize, where the soft
sweet-corn, when fertilized by hard yellow-corn, the grain so fertilized
takes the character of the fertilizer. My note about it is in Academy
“Proceedings,” vol. iv., I think. You have the volumes (which I have not
in reach now), and can find it by the index. It does not amount to much.
Nothing on maize I know of except Bonafous’ folio volume. I am going to
get and send you grains of four or five sorts of maize. About the
involucrate form, I wrote in my last.
TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.
CAMBRIDGE, 14th October, 1862.
DEAR ENGELMANN,--Never mind turmoil. It will come out right. I go
against the abolition wing, but support the President in his
Proclamation.
If the rebels continue obstinate, that is only a question of time. Of
that, as a military measure, and of the expediency, the President of the
United States is the sole judge, and in time of war he is to be
supported heartily. I myself do not see clearly that the time had come.
But I have a notion that the President knows better than I.
As you like Judge Parker, I will send you an article written before the
Proclamation came out. You will like it, all but the last part, the
bitter end. I would continue the war, if necessary, to the sweeping of
all rebeldom bare. And that appears to be the sober sentiment of the
country.
If Judge Parker, etc., had let their convention alone, we would have
ousted Sumner for a wiser man. But now I fear that Sumner will be
returned to the Senate.
You had better in Missouri abolish slavery and take United States bonds
in indemnity. You will never do better.
TO CHARLES WRIGHT.
October 13, 1862.
Both Torrey and Eaton speak of having your photograph. You cut me, I
suppose, because I am such a poor correspondent! I am afraid I deserve
it, but what can a poor fellow do in such times as these?...
A fruit, one of a dozen ripened here this season in the Garden, has such
a tropical look and taste that it reminded me of you. It is Asimina
triloba! Tastes like a rich custard into which a piece of scented soap
has fallen....
General Stuart with his cavalry has been cutting all round McClellan’s
army again. Next time, I expect they will make a circuit as far round as
Boston, or at least Connecticut, and carry off the horses. They are more
in earnest than we are; but we shall use them up at length.
November 14.
Here I was this afternoon, moiling over your plants, copying out
Grisebach’s manuscripts for the printer (for the printer won’t touch the
Dutchy-looking thing; and besides, I have additions to make, etc.), when
I just happened to remember that to-morrow is Havana mail, and that I
was by all means to write to you to-day. There is still time, so here
goes.
First, can’t you make some arrangement, while you are at this end of
Cuba, to receive a Yankee newspaper by mail; say to the address of Don
José Blain, or some Havana address. If you can arrange it that it is not
stopped, I will send you papers regularly; say the little “Boston
Herald,” small, soon read, democratic, patriotic, or others, from time
to time....
As to collecting still, I should say, Yes, go on, in a gradual and cheap
way, i. e., do not make very heavy outlays, as long as you are in the
country; at least till next summer. For we cannot get the war done until
late next spring (except in Texas).
If you can do as much for western as for eastern Cuba, it will be a good
thing....
Meanwhile I have money enough for you, if you can only get it....
But how can you get it at present rates? Or how can I get it to you? If
greenbacks would pass there as here, it would be easy enough.
Is there not some Yankee product that I could ship to you that Blain or
Lescaille wants, sewing-machines, agricultural implements, chairs? So we
might save the loss on exchange. I will send you anything, from a
mouse-trap to a wheelbarrow!
You have a letter from me which must have reached you soon after yours
of October 25, saying that my last was eighty-five days old! Indeed,
you ought to have had it then....
TO CHARLES DARWIN.
January 27, 1863.
I have been far too busy to write letters; have been interrupted, too,
by visitors, etc....
You “wish to heaven the North did not hate us so.” We equally wish the
English did not hate us so. Perhaps we exaggerate the ill will in
England against us. You certainly over-estimate that of the United
States against England, which an influential part of your press
exaggerates and incites for the worst purposes. But, after all, after
the first flurry, we think and say very little about you, and shall live
in peace with you, if you will let us. There should have been, and might
have been, the most thorough good will between us. I do not think it is
all our fault that it is not so.
In reply to your question:--
If oak and beech had large, colored corolla, etc., I know of no reason
why it would be reckoned a low form, but the contrary, quite. But we
have no basis for high or low in any class, say, dicotyledons, except
perfection of development or the contrary in the floral organs, and even
the envelopes; and as we know these may be reduced to any degree in any
order or group, we have really, that I know of, no philosophical basis
for high and low. Moreover, the vegetable kingdom does not culminate, as
the animal kingdom does. It is not a kingdom, but a commonwealth; a
democracy, and therefore puzzling and unaccountable from the former
point of view.
I have just read De Candolle’s paper on oaks and species, and origin.
Well, he has got on about as far towards you as I have. It is clear
enough that, as I thought at first, derivation of species is to be the
word, and natural selection admitted. The only question is, whether this
is enough.
Ever your attached friend,
A. GRAY.
TO A. DE CANDOLLE.
CAMBRIDGE, February 16, 1863.
I am disposed to join issue with you on the question of Linnæus’
definition of species. I have long pondered your discussion of the
subject in “Géographie Botanique,” and still think, on the supposition
of the fixity of species (which Linnæus of course had in view), that
between “community of descent” and “likeness,” the former and not the
latter is the fundamental conception in the idea of species. We may test
this by inquiring whether of the two can be derived from the other. The
likeness, I suppose, is the consequence of the community of descent.
But, then, as the likeness is a thing of degrees, and, according to
present probabilities, species may have only a relative and temporary
fixity, your view will after all have the advantage; and the question of
species will come to be metaphysical or logical, rather than
natural-historical. The worst of all is that there will remain no
objective basis or standard; and species will be what each naturalist
thinks best so to consider!
I am pleased to know that the view of my article on the “Memoirs”[53] is
well received by you. Readable articles are very needful, when they can
be had, for a journal which, like Silliman’s, cannot exist without
popular support. I promised an article of sixteen pages of this
character; but I intended to enlarge more at the close upon the genius
and influence of your father, and cite your parallel with Linnæus as
portrayed by Fabricius. But I found that my pages were filled before I
was aware of it, and I had to cut short, much too curtly. It left me
with a somehow dissatisfied feeling. All your remarks about the
difference between the profound and the prolific botanists, I agree to;
and I think that both Linnæus and De Candolle had as much genius as
Robert Brown....
Well, as to origin of species, you have now gone just about as far as I
have, in Darwinian direction, and both of us have been led step by step
by the facts and probabilities, and have not jumped at conclusions.
I shall be curious to see Mme. Royer’s book; Darwin has spoken of her.
Under my hearty congratulations of Darwin for his striking contributions
to teleology, there is a vein of petite malice, from my knowing well
that he rejects the idea of design, while all the while he is bringing
out the neatest illustrations of it!
Did time allow, I should like to write at large upon these enticing
topics....
TO W. J. HOOKER.
CAMBRIDGE, March 16, 1863.
I received this morning a letter from William Short, announcing to me
the death of his lamented father, our excellent friend, Dr. C. W. Short,
of Louisville, Kentucky, one of our oldest botanists, and one of the
best of men and kindest of friends. He died on the 7th inst., of a
typhoid fever, supervening on a severe cold.
I feel the loss very much. Although we never met, he was one of my most
valued friends....
He always remembered his former correspondence with you with great
interest, and was particularly pleased when, in my letter, I could give
him news of you.
His herbarium, upon which he bestowed great pains and considerable
expense, is conditionally bequeathed to the Smithsonian Institution.
Our botanical Nestor is Dr. Darlington. A few months since I had a
letter from him written in as firm a hand as ever; but now he is
prostrated by paralysis, which, however, leaves his mind clear. But he
cannot remain much longer with us. Short and Darlington were both hearty
and true Christian gentlemen.
April 28, 1863.
Your kind letter of the 6th inst. and the photograph were received with
more gratification than I can well express. Both your handwriting and
your _carte de visite_ show you to be well and strong, and, please God,
long may you so continue.
Your face looks fuller than a dozen years ago, and a bit older, it may
be, but it recalls your friendly and kindly expression, and is the best
substitute I can have for not seeing you again.
What I wrote of our Nestor, Dr. Darlington, as about to be removed from
us, has come to pass. The good old man died, after much suffering from a
paralysis, on Wednesday last, the 22d, as a newspaper slip has apprised
me. He had reached the age of eighty-one. Unless we continue to rank
Dr. Bigelow among the botanists, Dr. Torrey, and even myself, now count
among the most advanced in age.
I am most happy to tell you that Dr. Torrey, whom I lately saw in New
York, and who last week looked in upon us here for a day, is quite well.
Mrs. Greene is cheerful and busy in carrying out her husband’s bequest
and desires, in favor of the Boston Natural History Society, to whom he
left his herbarium and botanical library.
By Professor George Bond, a colleague and neighbor of mine, our
distinguished astronomer, and a most worthy, amiable, and modest person,
whom I hope you may see, I sent out to you a photograph of F. A. Michaux
and of Adrien de Jussieu, which I thought you might like, and which I
have just had made from daguerreotypes which I induced them to sit for
in Paris in 1851. Bond will be delighted to see Kew again with its vast
improvements.
Ever, dear Sir William, yours affectionately,
ASA GRAY.
TO MRS. THOMAS P. JAMES.
CAMBRIDGE, April 30, 1863.
I had sent some while ago word to Miss Morris that I had a single
seedling Darlingtonia, and should like to know if Dr. Darlington was in
condition to be interested in it. But she thought the time had passed
for that.
His memory will long be venerated. We, at least, shall not forget him.
Twenty years ago he had sent to me his selected epitaph, and had
discussed it. It is natural and characteristic. I should take an
interest in seeing such an inscription on his tombstone. But, entre
nous, I should not fancy such an one on my own. I should select rather
some simple line of Holy Writ, expressive of the Christian trust and
faith, such as our friend died in.
I had lately been writing brief notices of several of our botanists,
deceased, for the May number of “Silliman’s Journal” (as you see, I mail
a copy just received); and at the time I felt that they probably would
not be published before there would be another and more distinguished
name to add.
I shall not wait for the year to come round, but I hope to draw up a
brief tribute to his memory for the July number of “Silliman’s Journal.”
So I should be much obliged to you for the dates and other particulars
you kindly offer to furnish. I hope that autobiography which you are so
fortunate as to possess is of such a character that it may be printed,
and that you will give it along with a little memoir from your own pen.
It will be quite in your way, and I would rather you should do it than
any one else....
By the way, I may as well mention that Dr. Darlington told me that
certain letters, etc., of Baldwin’s, which he could not print, as they
were severe on Nuttall, should come into my possession after his own
death. You will probably know if any bundle of papers is left, directed
to my charge.
TO CHARLES DARWIN.
CAMBRIDGE, March 22, 1863.
MY DEAR DARWIN,--Argyle’s article on the Supernatural, to which you
called my attention a long while ago, I never happened to see till
to-day, when I have read it through. It is quite clever, not deep, but
clear, and I think useful. I see no occasion for finding fault with him,
except in his attempts now and then to direct a little odium against
you, which is unhandsome, for his main points are those I hammered out
in the “Atlantic,” etc.; indeed I see signs of his having read the same.
But it is hardly fair of him, after expressing his complete conviction
that where the operation of natural causes can be clearly traced, the
implication of design, upon its appropriate evidence, is not thereby
rendered less certain or less convincing, to go on to speak of
derivation-doctrine in a way that implies the contrary.
Of course we believers in real design make the most of your “frank” and
natural terms, “contrivance, purpose,” etc., and pooh-pooh your
endeavors to resolve such contrivances into necessary results of certain
physical processes, and make fun of the race between long noses and long
nectaries!
March 23.
Dr. Wyman,[54] who is a sharp fellow, tells me that, on the authority of
the historian Prescott, the Incas of Peru, for no one knows how long,
married their sisters, to keep the perfect purity of the blood. Query:
How did this strong case of close-breeding operate? Did they run out
thereby? Wyman thinks there is no evidence of it.
If it is true, and the Incas stood it for a long course of generations,
you must look to it, for it will bear hard against your theory of the
necessity of crossing. If they run out, you will have a good case.
April 11.
You see that, at length, the thing is nearly done, and, to use the
expression here, rebeldom is “gone up.”
You have long seen, I suppose, that I was right in saying there was but
one possible end to the war; also that the continuance for a time or
abolition of slavery depended simply on the rebels,--that if they
obstinately and persistently resisted, slavery was thereby doomed.
It has been a long, weary, and trying work. But the country has had the
needed patience and nerve, and the thing is done, once for all, at great
cost, but to immense and enduring advantage.
You are the only Britisher I ever write to on this subject, and, in
fact, for whose opinions about our country I care at all.
So I hasten to rejoice with you over the beginning of the end.
April 20.
You asked me to tell you, when I had read it, what I thought of Sir
Charles Lyell’s book.[55] I have only to-day finished the perusal of the
copy he kindly sent me, that is, all but half of the matter on glacial
period, which I reserve till I can read it more attentively. Throughout
it is a very interesting and to me a very satisfactory book. It is three
books: 1. A capital résumé and examination of what we knew about the
evidence of antiquity of man; no evidence we had not read of before, but
very clearly presented, of course.
2. A treatise on the glacial period. Out of this I have much to learn,
and must read it all again carefully; of a part I have not yet cut the
leaves.
3. On transmutation matters. That part of the book I can judge somewhat
of, and I declare it first-rate. It is just about what I expected, and
is characteristic of the man. I think that you, and Hooker, are
unreasonable in complaining of Lyell that he does not come out
“flat-footed,” as we say, as an advocate of natural-selection
transmutation. For, 1st, it is evident that though inclined strongly
towards it he is by no means satisfied that natural selection will do
all the work you put upon it. 2d, he very plainly implies nearly all you
would have him say. And, 3d, he serves your cause (supposing it to be
well-founded) quite as effectually, perhaps, by his guarded position, by
his keeping the position of a judge rather than of an advocate, and by
considering still the case as not yet ripe for a decision.
Very skillfully, too, has he presented the case of transmutation so as
to commend it, as much as possible, to us orthodox people. (Huxley, I
suppose, whose two books I have not seen, would put it in a way to
frighten us off.) Indeed, I think he has shown remarkable judgment and
taste, and will have much success in disarming prejudice. And this is
all you could ask.
The chapter on language makes the points I supposed would be made, or
some of them, but only dips in, leaving more to be said. But this is
rather ticklish ground, for, if we are not careful here, you would get
the better of us in this field quoad design.
If I had got the book three or four weeks earlier I should have worked
in some notice of the last chapter into my review of De Candolle, etc.,
on Species, in the May number of “Silliman’s Journal.”
Now please do not think of being ill this spring, and passing all your
valuable time, wasting it, at a water-cure.
I have really, as you see, nothing special to write of this week, and no
time to read what I have hurriedly penned.
May 26.
Your letter on heterogeny is keen and good; Owen’s rejoinder ingenious.
But his dissent from your well-put claims of natural selection to
attention and regard is good for nothing except on the admission of the
view that species are somehow derived genealogically; and this I judge,
from various of Owen’s statements, that he really in his heart believes
to be the case, and was (as I long ago intimated my suspicions) hunting
about for some system of derivation, when your book came down upon him
like a thunderclap.
Wyman, here, is greatly pleased with Huxley’s book on man’s place in
nature. I have not even seen it.
Did you ever notice how prettily Iris is arranged for cross-fertilizing
by bees, etc.?
Your Linum paper has long been here. But I have actually not had time to
read it. I might have glanced at it. But I find it best to read only
when I can do so with some attention.
Phyllotaxis: I have no notion in the world why the angular divergences
should be of that series of numbers and not of others. Opposite leaves
give (decussating) the angles. My puzzle has been to account for this
system in cycles in leaves running into the system of decussating whorls
in flowers (usually, almost universally). You will see the question by
comparing in my “Botanical Text-Book” (not “Lessons”), pp. 236, 237,
with chapter v., section 1; and you see I have drawn an illustration
from it apropos to Falconer’s remark. But explaining the obscure by the
obscure does not amount to much.
As to national affairs, how quarrelsome you English are. Here are we,
cool and quietly occupied with our little affairs, never dreaming of
harm from you, and your people are trying their prettiest to pick a
quarrel with us, because we do what Historicus says the English have
always done and will do again when the time comes, having Lord Stowell
to back them! Tell me, who is Historicus in the “Times”? An able and
most influential person evidently.
The government of England is now showing sense. Do not wonder that some
wild talk is given to the air in this rough country, after what you have
heard in the House of Commons, and read in the “Times,” etc. Am afraid
we shall not like each other for a good while--the nations. But all
shows I was right. We must carry out our little job, and hold the United
States complete and develop material strength at any cost, or we could
not live without eating more dirt than we like.
Boasting nonsense is pretty well knocked out of us by severe discipline
and sad reverses, but the determination is stronger than ever.
Time up and paper full. Forgive my maundering, and believe me to be,
Ever your affectionate,
A. GRAY.
June, [1863].
I am kept distractingly busy, so look for nothing of any use from me yet
awhile.
Your Ohio case of law against marrying of cousins, I put to my
neighbor, Professor Parsons, who had it looked up. He tells me there is
no such law at all on the Ohio statute books, nor is there a trace of
any law on the subject to be found in the laws of any State in the
United States. He doubts if there can really be any statistics which
tell on the point, because, first, the marriage of first cousins is a
rare thing in this country; second, the United States decennial censuses
do not afford any information on the matter; third, nor any of the
[state] censuses that he knows of.
Pray, don’t run mad over Phyllotaxis! I can’t save you, I am sure.
George’s “Converging Sines” is the same, perhaps, as what Bravais was
after. His memoir may help you (see “Botanical Text-Book,” p. 141, par.
248); or, if you want something thoroughly mathematical, consult
Neumann, of Berlin, in some paper, which I have no reference to....
I am sorry you do not give a better account of yourself. Be careful and
do not work too hard.
July 7.
My last from you is May 31.
I had arranged to reprint most of Bates on Mimetic Analogy in
“Silliman’s Journal,” but my long review of A. de Candolle crowded it
out. I then thought of a brief abstract, but have had no time to prepare
it. I wrote remarks and arranged long extracts of your Linum paper, and
insisted on it for the July number of “Silliman’s Journal.” But it, too,
was laid over, not for anything I had, for I have little in the July
number.
I like and agree to your remark that, in Bates’s Geographical Varieties,
etc., we get about as near to seeing a species made as we are ever
likely to get; and so believing, I think your gradual way more likely
than Heer’s jumps.
Apropos to Heer, you ask me if it is not impossible to imagine so many
and nice coadaptations as we see in orchids being formed all by a chance
blow.
I reply, Yes, perfectly impossible to imagine (and much the same by any
number of chance blows).
So I turn the question back upon you. Is not the fact that the
coadaptations are so nice next to a demonstration against their having
been formed by chance blows at all, one or many?
Here lies, I suppose, the difference between us. When you bring me up to
this point, I feel the cold chill.
I have been doing nothing but attend to my daily work, and had got so
fagged that I really thought I was about to have softening of the brain,
or some other breakdown. But a week of respite, caused by the death of
an aged relative of my wife’s,--a dear old soul,--taking us away from
here perforce, has set me up very nearly, and now after a week more
comes my vacation, and we are off into the quiet country for three
weeks.
A little legacy of about £2,000 to my wife comes in opportunely to
relieve us of anxiety for the future. We have no children (which I
regret only that I have no son to send to the war), and this with a
little income, rather precarious, of about £200 a year would support us
in our very simple way, if I were to throw up my place here. But I
cannot do that yet....
Look at Impatiens flowers; see if the most fertile “precociously
fertilized” ones ever get crossed!
I have asked in three directions for seeds of the Specularia perfoliata.
Inclosed are depauperate specimens.
It is pretty to see honey-bees cross-fertilize Locust (Robinia), much as
you say of broom. One of my students has been noticing the way bees act
on Kalmia.
Now for my best thing for to-day.
An orchid which I missed last year, Platanthera flava, I knew would be
curious, for I remembered a strong protuberance on base of labellum, on
the median line. I have not time left to describe it now, having been
sadly interrupted, but it is pretty,--equal to anything you have yet
seen in British orchids. The process turns proboscis of insect either to
right or left, where it will slip into an imperfect ring (as seen from
above) or deep groove (as seen from before), in which lies the disk, not
flat but coiled up, ready to catch proboscis. It is like the eye of a
needle to receive the thread.
Perhaps I will send you, or print, a sketch[56] of the thing.
I am waiting for Gymnadenia tridentata to come on.
But the post hour has come.
July 21.
Your latest is of the 26th ult. You need not worry! It never wearies nor
bores me to write to you, in the off-hand way I do. I enjoy our
correspondence too much to consent to curtail or interrupt it. I learn
from you, here in this remote part of the world, a thousand things which
I should not otherwise know at all. And you stimulate my mind far more
than any one else, except, perhaps, Hooker. So please do not make a
fuss, but let me go on in my own fashion, and send me your fresh and
stimulating letters, whenever you are in the mood of it. I am now in my
vacation, and already, having idled and dawdled a week or two, I am as
well and hearty as possible, and in the best of spirits. We should leave
home this week for three weeks’ run in the country, but the sickness of
my wife’s nephew, Lieutenant Jackson of Massachusetts Cavalry, will keep
us awhile, as, though not alarming, it might take a bad turn, and so I
may not be in the country for a week or two yet. We shall see....
I have strong and fresh Drosera rotundifolia, and it will now turn in
its bristles and stick the viscid gland fast to a fly, binding him fast
on all sides with liliputian cords. But it is awfully slow about
it,--say three or four hours, and the next day the leaf sometimes
becomes involute and folds over or curves around the insect; but what
good? If the fly is not stuck fast in alighting, no movement takes place
to hold him till he has got away if he ever could. However, it is an
indication of what is so effectually done in Dionæa.
Rotary movement of end of tendril-bearing stems is common, is it not,
and well-known?
Any notes you will give me to print in “Silliman’s Journal,” I shall
always delight in.
I have been reading Owen’s Aye-aye paper. Well, this is rich and cool!
Did I not tell you in the “Atlantic,” long ago, that Owen had a
transmutation theory of his own! It is your Hamlet, with the part of
Hamlet left out! But as you say now, you don’t so much insist on natural
selection, if you can only have derivation of species. And Owen goes in
for derivation on the largest scale. You may as well lovingly embrace!
Oh, it is rare fun!...
I have been so far disappointed in getting no Gymnadenia tridentata. But
I still hope for it. I must have it, indeed.
Boott’s address is good, chiefly very good. But he speaks of Wyman’s
paper without having duly considered it. Wyman’s experiments are better
than Pasteur’s, and the results opposite!
P. S.--Papers just in, or rather telegrams, that you in London were
daily awaiting and expecting the capture of Washington, etc., and
speculating as to whether Jeff Davis’s envoys from Washington might not
be received at London as a fait accompli. A good deal of
little-concealed joy, etc.
Oh, foolish people! When will you see that there is only one end to all
this, and that the North never dreams of any other,--the complete
putting down of the rebellion. And since 1863 began, it was clear that
it would be attended with the annihilation of slavery.
Time was when we should have highly valued English appreciation of the
right cause. We have long ceased to care or think about it.
We only wish you had the city of New York. But the sympathizers with
secession and riot there have done their worst, and lost their game. The
city of New York is the only part of our country which I am ashamed of;
and the trouble there is that it is not American.
Enough; good-bye.
A. G.
September 1.
Your fine, long letter of August 4th reached me up in the country, in my
native region, in the centre of the State of New York, rusticating and
enjoying ourselves mightily. We were among the people of a thriving
region; a well-to-do set; no poverty near us for miles and miles, i.
e., no hardship, except any that a drunken laborer might bring on his
family; and I longed to take you out with us in our drives, that you
might see a happy and comfortable country, more and more so every year,
and perhaps a larger ratio of the population refined to a reasonable
degree in feeling and life than I know of in any other part of the
world.
I will consider about fantastic variation of pigeons. I see afar trouble
enough ahead quoad design in nature, but have managed to keep off the
chilliness by giving the knotty questions a rather wide berth. If I
rather avoid, I cannot ignore the difficulties ahead. But if I adopt
your view bodily, can you promise me any less difficulties?
If your Lythrum paper shall be at all equal in interest to that on
Linum, it will be a gem.
As to tendrils, what are Hooker and Oliver (the latter a professor, too)
about, and where have they lived not to know anything of them? Everybody
must have seen, in Cucurbitaceæ and Passiflora, tendrils reaching out
straight for a certain time, and then, if they reach nothing, coiling up
from the end. Also the sweeping of stems....
P. S. [To the above?] Three numbers of Boston newspapers recently sent
you, two by this mail (in which my good beau-père is again “spiking the
English”), please to forward to Reuben Harvey, Esq., Limerick, Ireland.
You are quite out in supposing that hatred of England is increasing, or
that there is the least desire to meddle with you, except in
self-defense.
My own feelings were very sensitive at first, because I expected better
things, and I then deferred much to British opinion. I now do neither,
and nothing strikes me more than the smallness of mind and largeness of
gullibility of the British people, as far as I can judge from their
press (weeklies, quarterlies, and “Times”). But I do not suppose you
will fight us because you dislike us; and so conversely. I suppose I do
not see the papers which so abuse England, though I read influential and
respectable papers; but from what I do see, I think we receive far more
abuse and misrepresentation and unfair usage than we give.
As to the course of the war and policy of our country as to slavery,
some day when you turn back to some early letter of mine you will see
that I was a fairly good prophet; that the South might have delayed the
abolition of slavery by giving up early in the conflict, but that every
month of continued resistance hastened and insured the downfall of
slavery. That is now doomed, and sure near to rapid death; quick in some
places, slower in others, but sure.
Ill-usage of negroes--who make such good soldiers--will soon be unheard
of, except with Irish. It will take some generations of American life to
breed out the barbarian they bring to the country.
November 23.
The next best thing, of late, is the exposé of Lindsay and George
Saunders (the Confederates) by Historicus.
I trust Historicus’ previous letters, in which he shows (about the same
time my father-in-law’s articles on the subject reached England) that it
is the duty of a country to see that armed or war vessels are not fitted
out, quite irrespective of all municipal law, have produced their proper
effect. Something has produced a great effect, and a great change in the
idea of what it was incumbent on the government to do; and nothing can
be more satisfactory than the views now taken; and the effect here is
excellent. For we are sure that when the right notions once get a
lodgment, as they have, England will faithfully carry them through.
Lawyers whom I knew here were confident how the law would ultimately be
laid down by your courts; but we greatly feared it would be done only
after a few more such vessels had got to sea. All will go well now.
The newspaper I occasionally send you is a fair specimen of the
influential part of the press here. Such articles as the “Times” likes
to cite have far less effect here than you suppose in the determination
of events.
TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.
CAMBRIDGE, December 11, 1863.
MY DEAR ENGELMANN,--Our good old friend Von Martius writes me that on
the 30th March next, he will reach his fiftieth anniversary of his
doctorate. I dare say his friends will commemorate it in Germany. It
occurs to me that it would be a good idea for some of us, his friends
and correspondents, to compliment him upon the occasion. Suppose you
draw up in German a letter of congratulation, etc., to be signed by
yourself, Torrey, Sullivant, etc., and forward about the proper time.
Send me, with your German circular letter to Martius, a translation in
English....
Yes, I will let you work at botany when I guard you.[57] Your botanical
work is far better than your politics. But you must swear the
President’s oath, Proclamation and all!!
Martius is not a very remarkable botanist, but good; is a genial,
philosophical soul (full of Plato, etc.), a good explorer, has worked up
the Palms, etc., well, and is a wonderful man for the amount he knows on
a vast number of different subjects,--philology, antiquities,
philosophy, et id genus omne.
May 3, [1864].
... Spring is opening here, but late. From this to July 10, I am engaged
in college every day in the week. Also am watching the herbarium
building go up, the brick walls of which, if good weather, may be all up
this week, and the roof put on next week.
Your circular letter to good Martius was very good, especially in its
original German. Thanks....
Never mind if “Sagittaria graminea, Michaux,” is applicable to only one
form. You had best keep the old name, the more so as that you propose,
S. simplicifolia, is “not always correct.” We can’t let you change a
name because you can improve it. Too many can and would play at that
game, and less discreetly than you would, and then cite your example!
If Fendler gets tired of bush-clearing, and will come to me this fall, I
will give him $500 a year as curator, lodgings, two rooms in gardener’s
house, which I have reserved; and let him have say three days in the
week for himself, if he wants them.
The people are determined to support and reëlect their excellent
President Lincoln (what a noble letter that last of his), whether
Frémont and the like make a coalition with copperheads or not. It is all
the same to us. Lincoln will walk the course. God bless him!
Wright is coming home for a few months this summer.
TO CHARLES WRIGHT.
CAMBRIDGE, September 18, 1863.
What Don José affirms about coast and mountain vegetation being much the
same is curious, unlikely, yet you seem to find it so. That bit of coast
with all microphyllous and spiny vegetation is also curious.
I am glad you like him for being an abolitionist. Though not very much
of an abolitionist myself, at the start, I hope I can fall in with, and
welcome, the ways of Providence, when Providence takes the matter in
hand, and say Amen....
Well, you are doing well in botanizing, and should finish up Cuban
botany while you are at it. And on your return, you and Grisebach should
join teams, and do up Cuban botany in a full memoir. You are right to
stay till next spring. You are happy in Cuba; you would not be so here.
Things in the United States do not go to suit you at all. “Things is
working,” and in the right way,--but the end must be the total
suppression of the rebellion,--the exile or punishment of rebel leaders,
the return of the masses to their duty, and they will put things
straight. Just what is now going on in Tennessee will go on elsewhere, I
suppose. I know only one man in Cambridge that you could talk secesh to.
We can correspond very well, and keep cool. But if we were together,
during the war, we should get into a row at once. It could not be
otherwise....
When the Union is restored (which it is to be, of course, when the
rebellion is put down) those who do not love us well enough to resume
their duties and privileges have only to take themselves off to some
country they like better. The United States of America belongs to loyal
Americans. After the war the country will prosper wonderfully. And the
South will get to be something.
December 1.
Things move on.
“The mills of the Gods grind slow, but they grind exceeding fine.” Wait
in Cuba a year longer, and you may return to a country in which slavery,
having tried to get more, has lost all, and as a system is defunct, to
the lasting benefit of all parties.
You might now revisit your old Texan haunts, under General Banks’s
protection.
The November elections show a united North. Peace democracy has made its
issue, and is dead. The reëlection of Lincoln by acclamation seems
probable, supported by moderate men of all sorts, the extremes of the
opposing parties alone going against him....
Merry Christmas to you.
January 21, 1864.
By the steamer of Saturday, which takes this, a good young fellow, Mr.
Kennedy, a member of our Senior class, goes to Cuba, to look after
business of his father, and, when he can, to botanize, only four or five
weeks, that is, in vacation. He is very fond of botany, and bids fair to
be a botanist some day, if he does not take to money-making instead....
This war, we think, will be pretty much over next summer; and then, back
in the Union, with slavery pretty much nowhere, by the hearty wish of a
majority of the people, we may expect a career of prosperity and real
advance of the South, such as it has never known. At least we hope so.
TO R. W. CHURCH.
CAMBRIDGE, December 25, 1863.
For ourselves, your letter found us here just on the eve of our month’s
holiday, a trip to Lake George, and thence to my natal region, in the
most beautiful (and the most English-looking) part of the State of New
York.... My wife was well enough to do her small part in a great fair
held in Boston for the United States Sanitary Commission (which has kept
the ladies very busy for the last six months), which has just closed,
having brought the net proceeds of about $125,000 (it turns out
$140,000) for the relief of suffering.
As to our national affairs, I should like now and then to send you such
comments or articles as seem to me to throw most light upon our
condition. There is little I could say in a letter. I said very early to
English friends that if the rebellion were short it might leave things
much as they were before (no desirable state), but if long and
obstinate, it would cut the knot we were unable to untie and completely
destroy the slave system. You see now it is coming to pass, by rather
slow but sure steps, and a great blessing it is to be to the South. To
the North the war, with all its sad evils, has been a great good,
morally and politically. The end is in the hands of Providence, and we
humbly wait for it; but there is very little diversity of opinion here
as to what, essentially, the end is to be, that is, the complete
territorial reinstatement of the Union, and the abolition of slavery.
Very sanguine, you think, in England. We must wait and see, and on our
part hope and labor.
Now for a little personal matter. I have long been anxious for the
safety and final destination of my herbarium and other botanical
collections, which in my house (besides that, there is not room for
them) are too liable to destruction from fire. I had offered them, with
my botanical library, to our university, if they would build in the
Botanic Garden a fireproof building to hold them, and raise a small fund
for their support. Recently and quite unexpectedly, a banker in Boston,
almost unknown to me personally, has offered in any case to construct
the building, and a few friends are taking steps, with good prospects,
to raise by gifts a fund of $10,000 for the support of the
establishment. When done, I shall feel that my collections, which are
most important for North American botany, are secure for the use of
future botanists. To secure this I gladly divest myself of the ownership
of collections which have absorbed most of my small spare means for the
last thirty years, and which are valued at $20,000 or more....
In the council of our American Academy (of which since May last I have
been president) we have nominated Dean Milman to the foreign honorary
membership vacated by the death of Whately, and Max Müller to that
vacated by Grimm. The election has not yet taken place.
Mrs. Gray, with kind regards, joins me in best wishes for the new year
to you and yours.
Very sincerely yours,
ASA GRAY.
TO A. DE CANDOLLE.
CAMBRIDGE, December 22, 1863.
MY DEAR DE CANDOLLE,--I thank you cordially for your letter of the 13th
November, and for the copy of Thury’s interesting and curious paper.
This I had not seen, neither Pictet’s notice. I find it very
interesting, but I do not see how he got a legitimate deduction from the
facts given by Knight in the vegetable kingdom to his principle in the
animal kingdom. However, that is of small moment if the principle holds.
The subject is one which will naturally attract much attention, and
which, as you remark, has philosophical bearings. I mean to bring it up,
next week, for discussion at our private (social) scientific club in
Cambridge.
I thank you also for the good spirit in which you take, as I meant them,
my criticisms upon your article on Species, etc. There is no progress to
be made upon such interesting subjects without free criticism, because
without it we cannot perfectly clear up our own views nor impart them
perfectly to others. And especially, since I have so often to criticise
the views or writings of persons for whom I have no particular regard,
it is pleasant, if only for the sake of impartiality, to criticise those
for whom you have the greatest regard and respect. So I particularly
like it when I can criticise such a near friend as J. D. Hooker or
Bentham, and I believe they like it, too, at least Hooker, who is
himself a very free critic. Of course, I know very well that you will be
likely to turn all the points I made. The question upon which of the two
foundations the idea of species rests, I well know is not to be settled
off-hand by any bit of argument. Pray take up the cudgels against me
whenever an occasion offers.
As to theoretical views, you and I receive and use them as means, not as
ends, and expect to change many of them from time to time. Such
especially as relate to origins and causes are the questions which we
ask, rather than answers that we receive; and we put our questions
variously according to the leadings of the case at the time. But this is
all commonplace and trite.
It is curious to see that Owen, in his Aye-aye paper, has come to adopt
Heer’s[58] views essentially, of course without the slightest allusion
to Heer.
Our civil war goes on slowly, but very surely, toward the destruction of
negro slavery; and with all its great cost, we may hope for future
benefit in proportion. By the time we have nearly ended our war, it may
be that Europe will have its turn again. I hope not.
A. GRAY.
TO JAMES D. DANA.
CAMBRIDGE, January 20, [1864].
MY DEAR DANA,--Perhaps you may not know, and I hope you may be as
pleased as I was to know, that your article of last summer on Geological
Periods is reprinted in full in the “Reader” (of London), with an
appreciative prefix.
Cephalization goes on bravely in your very taking article which you have
just sent me. I am much struck with it.
In one thing you zoölogists miss it, I think,--in following French
customs in dropping the Latin, the vernacular of science, in names. I
wish you would write Aphaniptera, etc., which is just as much English
after all as Aphanipters, and good for all languages.
Have Englishified contractions for all such names if you will; it is
well. But in proposing and formally writing of such divisions, etc.,
pray use the scientific form.
The other course has greatly jargonified zoölogy.
In botany we have always been more dignified. Moreover I detest “larve,”
though Kirby tried to introduce the word. “Larva” has got to be as
English as “phenomenon.”
But I dare say most would agree with you.
I like the ring of most of the new technical terms you have coined....
Ever yours,
A. GRAY.
TO CHARLES DARWIN.
February 16, 1864.
MY DEAR DARWIN,--Here we are past midwinter, and not being stimulated as
of old by your exciting letters, I have not written you a line since
Christmas. Not that I have had anything in particular to tell you. I
write now to say how very sorry I am that the word or two I get about
you from Hooker gives me the idea that you are having an uncomfortable
and suffering time, as well as entirely broken off from scientific work.
I feel very sorry about it, and do long for better news of you....
I have lately printed a couple of monographs, one pretty big one, of
American Astragali. I do not know that they contain anything you would
care to see. Yet I think I shall send you a copy presently, through
Hooker.
I feel much the loss of dear old Boott, so good, so true a friend, and
he was always writing me little notes telling me of all that was going
on.
The sentiment of our country, you must see, at least I assure you, has
settled, as I knew it would if the rebellion was obstinate enough, into
a determination to do away with slavery. Homely, honest, ungainly
Lincoln is the representative man of the country.
A Boston gentleman, at cost of $11,000 or more, is to build a fireproof
house for my herbarium, which I give to the university, with my
botanical library. A fund of $12,000 is raising to support it, which
will relieve me of the expenditure of about $500 a year. But I shall
have double care and bother all the coming spring and summer.
Dr. Scudder has gone to Cuba, to attend an invalid, and wishes to
examine orchid fertilization, and asks me what in particular he should
look at.
Pray get well, dear Darwin, and believe me to be ever,
Yours cordially,
ASA GRAY.
TO R. W. CHURCH.
CAMBRIDGE, April 4, 1864.
MY DEAR MR. CHURCH,--If you have long ago written your American
correspondent off your books, as being a right shabby fellow, he could
not complain.
Here is your agreeable letter of January 19th, a most prompt and more
than kind response to mine of Christmas, still unacknowledged by me!
The fact simply is that I have been delaying week by week in the hope of
being able to announce to you that the subscription for the support of
our botanical establishment was filled up. I am sorry to say that this
cannot yet be said. The matter has been privately conducted, that is,
nothing said about it in the public prints; but the two gentlemen who
took the matter in hand have quietly circulated the paper among their
well-to-do acquaintances in Boston, not beginning till late in January,
under the idea that the fair for the Sanitary Commission had perhaps
exhausted their friends’ purses. Since then, far greater and more
pressing demands have been made upon the benevolent and the
public-spirited, for a variety of good objects; and our affair has gone
slowly in consequence.
I have not heard for a week respecting it, but a week ago the sum
subscribed was a little less than seven thousand dollars, the greater