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
part in sums of $500 each. The $10,000 is obviously secure, for
subscribers of $100 each, yet to be appealed to, may be relied on for a
good part of the lacking sum. But it begins to be clearly seen that
$12,000 are needed for the capital of the fund, and this, at the present
rate, it will take some time to secure.
Your own offer of a small subscription, I can truly say, not only
gratified me in the highest degree, as an expression of an interest in
our affair which I had no reason to expect, but has already been of
use,--has really been as good for us as any contribution you ought to
make. For I took the liberty to read that portion of your letter to
three or four friends, and their interest in the matter was sensibly
quickened and exalted by this evidence of the lively interest in the
matter taken by a country parson, far away in England! So pray consider
that you have already helped us on, and we are truly grateful to you for
your generous proffer. There is, indeed, a strong temptation to accept
your kind offer in the fact that, in the present state of exchanges,
owing to our paper currency not on a specie basis (one of the sad
consequences of our civil war), every pound sterling in England, in
normal times worth only from $4.90 to $5.00, is worth nearly or quite
$8.00, so that a contribution of £5 sterling really now counts here for
about forty dollars!! So you see how hard it is for me to discourage
your kind intentions. But I really feel that the sum which I specified,
as the condition of my own gift to our university, is really quite sure,
though slower in coming than we had hoped.
As to the building for the herbarium, I have only to state it goes on
famously. It is considerably enlarged in plan from what was at first
contemplated, and a favorable early spring has allowed of more progress
than could have been expected at this season.
The generous donor of the building not only adopted at once the larger
plans as soon as suggested, but himself proposed improvements and
additions.
The building, the foundations of which are already laid, in the most
substantial manner, is 32 by 57 feet, and is connected with my private
study in the house I reside in by a neat conservatory 18 feet long,
which takes the place of the simple wooden corridor at first intended.
The whole will cost Mr. Thayer, the donor, by the contracts, more than
$11,000, and is likely, by extras, to reach the round sum of $12,000.
And all will be done before the summer is over, we trust.
See how the expression of your interest to me has led me on, to the
neglect of everything else I want to write about.... I wish to say
something about the troubles in your Old World, which, with all its age
and wisdom, falls into “difficulties” hardly less grave than ours. I
hope poor brave Denmark will not be crushed out of existence. There are
English questions which we regard with much attention, ecclesiastical
and social questions, on which I would fain know what you think. But I
cannot write longer now.
Only as to our war, I beg you to believe that we (the earnest thoughtful
people and most around us, according to their measure) have acted and
are acting from the highest sense of duty,--duty to our beloved country
and to humanity; and we keep the full conviction that great and
permanent good is to result. Much of the good we see already, and more
comes near to realization every day. So we work and trust, and suffer
cheerfully. We only wish our views and motives were better appreciated
in general in the country and by the people whose good opinion we most
value. But even the lack of that appreciation, which is far from
universal, is likely to do us good. I am always sure of your thoughtful
good wishes for us. But I must break off.
Ever yours most sincerely,
ASA GRAY.
TO A. DE CANDOLLE.
CAMBRIDGE, May 30, 1864.
MY DEAR DE CANDOLLE,--I have let your very kind letter of 28th January
lie on my desk a long time, always expecting to write soon, but, having
been extremely busy with various administrative matters and college work
since it reached me, the convenient moment for writing to you has not
arrived till now. I inclose a note to my young friend and late
colleague, Professor Eliot, which I beg you to send to the poste
restante on arrival. I learn from his friends here that he may be
expected to be in Geneva about the time this reaches you.
In my note I ask him to call upon you, as a friend of mine. He will of
course be unwilling to make any demands upon your time or attention.
But I should like him to see you, and perhaps he might through you pay
his respects to the _savans_ in his line, notably to De la Rive. Having
wife, etc., with him, and little time, his visit will be transient.
Eliot is a chemist and physicist, a man of much promise, we think, and a
most gentlemanly man. He is a very trusty friend of mine. He has passed
the autumn and winter in Paris, studying hard, and will soon return
here, bringing the latest news of you. He and his lady companions are
just such people as we should like you to know America by.
I should say to you, moreover, that I gave to another colleague of mine,
Professor Cooke, a note to you. He is a chemist and mineralogist, is
full of research and zeal, a most estimable man.
You know, perhaps, that I have made over (or am to make over) all my
herbarium and library to our university, in consideration of a fireproof
building made to receive them, and a fund, of moderate extent, raised
for the permanent support.... During the summer or early autumn, my
collections will be transferred to this their permanent home, to my
great relief.
It is probable that I shall continue to spend upon these collections all
my available means, and I hope they will be of use in the future, as
well as safe, which they are not in my wooden house. My own donation is
reckoned in money value at about $20,000.
Charles Wright is expected home from Cuba soon, when there will be a new
and interesting distribution of his phænogamous plants.
We trust that our civil war is in its last year, that is, if we are
victorious, as we hope to be. In that case your American stocks will be
all right again. Nearly all the little I possess is cheerfully put into
United States government stocks, where I am well content it should be.
Small countries, which you prefer, would do very well if all were small,
but the few large, like England and France, will domineer unpleasantly
over the smaller. Just look now at poor Denmark, which has the
misfortune to be small, and so is made to suffer! All Scandinavia had
best combine, and build up a strong nation. Natural selection is hard
upon the weak! However it may be in Europe, you must excuse us for
endeavoring to prevent, while we may, even at great cost, the
establishment of a European system on this side of the Atlantic; so we
must not fail to put down the Confederacy. We shall, after that, in a
quiet way, make the French emperor very uncomfortable in Mexico; but we
hope that country may yet be a strong power, but not a French power.
Enough of politics! And believe me to be, with affectionate regard,
Ever yours,
ASA GRAY.
CAMBRIDGE, January 30, 1865.
MY DEAR DE CANDOLLE: ... This very day, I have received your envoi by
post of the neat little article on leaves of Fagus, which I had seen in
English dress, and the copy of Heer’s address. Many thanks to you. I
have received also, and thank you much for it, the “Prodromus,” XIV., I.
I have this evening read over Heer’s address. It is, as you say,
capital. It interests me in its proof of the antiquity of the present
flora; and I admit that he very neatly puts the case between his view of
the production of our species out of the older ones, and that of Darwin.
Here it still rests: Darwin has the great advantage of
[Illustration: DR. ASA GRAY IN HIS STUDY]
being able to assign a vera causa. Heer has the disadvantage of having
no known cause to assign; but he shows that things do not appear to have
proceeded as Darwin’s theory requires. It does seem as if there were
times of peculiar change as well as of great stability. But were this
time of change and that of stability simultaneous for the species of a
flora? And does Heer allow enough for the species which now occur under
many forms,--show great polymorphism. I continually meet with these in
the North American flora; in which the dying out of some forms, and
their replacing by others, which may well take place in time, would, in
effect, just give a change like that to be accounted for. But I cannot
say that these varieties come in insensibly, very likely not.
Now, to speak of myself. My summer was much frittered away; the
superintending of the new building for my herbarium just preventing any
serious study. The autumn was devoted to the removal and rearrangement
of plants and books, and to assisting Charles Wright in the collation
and distribution into sets of his collections in Cuba for the last three
years past; very full and interesting collections, and requiring much
care and labor, on account of this distribution being a continuation of
former distributions. I laid out into the sets every specimen with my
own hands, Mr. Wright adding the tickets and numbers. It was an immense
labor, and was finished only at the close of the last day of the
year....
I mean to prepare for “Silliman’s Journal” a brief and simple notice of
the edifice for my herbarium, so I will not speak further of it here;
further than to say that I am well satisfied, only I sadly need a
curator!
And now, I turn to your letter of September 29, and ask your pardon for
having so long neglected it. Your letters, your reflections upon social
and political, as well as upon scientific questions, are always very
interesting and instructive to me. I regret that I can render so little
return in kind....
As to our national troubles, the prospect brightens that we shall end
the rebellion and slavery before long. God grant it.
Believe me to be, as ever, my dear De Candolle, very faithfully yours,
A. GRAY.
TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.
February 14, 1865.
... Wright is here, distributing and finishing up his North Pacific
Expedition Collection; ... will return to Cuba in a month or two, to
take a year or two more there, revisit some old parts and explore some
new; then I urge Hayti, but Wright seems rather loth.
Rothrock--from northwestern Pennsylvania--is a bright lively pupil of
mine for last three or four years, when not serving his country in the
army, where he has done good service as private in infantry, and as
captain in Pennsylvania cavalry, etc. He had to leave his thesis partly
unfinished. But the real credit of all belongs to him. His father is M.
D., and he is now studying medicine, attending lectures at Philadelphia.
But botany is in him, and will probably come out....
There, I believe this is about all. J. A. Lowell has made a nice present
of costly botanical books, of which more anon.
[March 18.]
... Rothrock is going with Kinnicut this week, to Northwestern America,
Norton’s Sound, etc., to explore on telegraph route close along the
Arctic Circle. Any pines there you want?...
March 29.
... No, Mrs. Gray did not go to inauguration ball. But she has had a
good time. Her brother, the general, took her from Fortress Monroe,
where she went, up to the front and close to rebel lines; where she had
the honor of having a rebel shell thrown at her!
I expect her home again to-morrow.
No, I don’t get a curator, and I want one sadly. Yet it is as well
Fendler did not come, as it might have been difficult for me to pay him.
He, however, is just the man I want here, to take charge of herbarium
and garden....
TO W. J. HOOKER.
CAMBRIDGE, April 24, 1865.
Mr. Wright is about to return to Cuba, to have one year more of
exploration there, and especially to visit Turquino, the highest
mountain of the island, and some other parts which are still promising.
He will now be able--as he is always most ready--to attend to the
gathering of seeds of palms, or other seeds, or things you may want at
Kew. He has now some good and kind friends in the country, and deserves
them, for he is one of the most hearty, single-minded, and disinterested
persons I ever knew, as well as an admirable collector; but being rather
rough in exterior, he does not like to come into contact with official
people, unless properly accredited. But if armed with official
instructions to British consuls, etc., and so having the means of very
promptly turning over, without bother or uncertainty, whatever he may
collect for you, I have no doubt you may turn him to excellent account.
Perhaps, however, he will not long remain in Cuba; for there is a
prospect of getting him attached (nominally, without any emolument) to
the United States consulate-general at Hayti, so that he may explore the
botany of that island, as he has done that of Cuba. But I doubt if he
will keep in the field many years more, or do such hard work as he has
done in former years. I wish him to explore Hayti, however, and then
associate himself with Grisebach in the production of a Flora Antillana,
or at least a Flora Cubensis, if Grisebach inclines to work longer at
West Indian botany, after having finished the critical enumeration of
Cuban plants (founded mainly on Wright’s collections) which he is now
occupied with....
It seems like old times to be writing to you. We have the less occasion
for direct correspondence of late years, owing to my having such a
capital correspondent, as well as a capital friend, in Joseph. I know
not how I could get on without him. I look with great satisfaction upon
his splendid scientific career, and feel that you must take great pride
in it. I rejoice to hear that you are so well and hearty, and at work
with vigor, comfort, and success upon the “Synopsis Filicum.”
Dr. Brewer[59] sends his regards. He goes this week to New Haven (Yale
College), to attend to the opening of his work as professor of
agriculture. I was running over his collections, naming and
characterizing the new things, and laying out a set for you of all you
could wish. But since spring opened, my college work has been so
pressing that all else has been interrupted, perhaps will be in abeyance
till near midsummer.
I must not fail to tell you that our good friend Dr. Torrey sailed
yesterday for California! via the Isthmus, to return three or four
months hence, perhaps overland.
He is a much trusted officer of government, as assayer of the United
States assay office at New York, and the secretary of the treasury,
knowing that he needs some respite and change, has arranged this trip
for him, upon business of the department, by no means of an onerous
character.
He has long wished to set eyes upon California, and I am glad he has
such a pleasant opportunity of doing so.
TO R. W. CHURCH.
May 1, 1865.
I have long wished to communicate with you, but it is long since I have
written any but pressing letters; a large and ever-increasing scientific
correspondence and various business matters absorbing all my leisure and
powers, as the times and events also absorb our thoughts. You can
imagine how deeply we have felt, rejoiced, and suffered during the last
month or so.
Well, “treason has done its worst,” and rebellion, as an organized
power, is essentially brought to an end. Slavery is done away, and we
have now the task of establishing a new and better order of things at
the South, of replacing barbarous by civilized and free institutions. A
heavy task, no doubt; but the good Providence that has so wonderfully
shaped our ways and sustained us thus far, we humbly and confidently
rely on to carry our dear country through all its trials.
I doubt if you will have in England a full conception of the profound
impression which this last atrocious crime has made,[60] filling the
whole land with the deepest and tenderest grief, like that of a personal
bereavement; inexpressibly shocking, but never for a moment bewildering
the country nor deranging the action of the government. The manner in
which both our victories and sorrows have affected the country is most
hopeful, and promises the best results. There is much yet to do and to
suffer, and there is need of wisdom, patience, and sacrifice in the
renovation of our country, and the establishment of free institutions
throughout the South, involving as it does the complete reconstruction
of society there. But under God’s blessing, we expect full success in
due time.
As to myself, I can say little now. I am quite overworked at this
season, but I hope that hereafter a rearrangement of my work in the
university may bring some relief.
I am beginning to enjoy the advantage and comfort of the establishment
of my herbarium, and the building quite meets my expectations. The
collections are fast increasing; faster than I can take care of them,
through the bounty of my scientific correspondents; while Mr. Lowell’s
donation of botanical books is of the value of about £300.
November 16, 1865.
Now do not be startled at a letter from me written the very evening of
the day in which arrived your pleasant favor of the 1st inst. For to-day
I also received the inclosed official letter, which has been lying, I
suppose, for want of your address. And so I send it forward at once.
In fact, the fund raised for the support of the herbarium (nearly
$11,000) has been till very lately retained in the hands of the
gentleman who took charge of raising it, in the form of a good
investment, and is now at length made over to the corporation of the
university in trust. Your £5 I turned in at the time when exchange was
at the highest (i. e., our currency most depreciated), so it figures as
fifty dollars,--quite a sum,--and for it, as for the rest of the
capital, we get, up to 1881, six per cent per annum in gold, if the
United States government lasts. And we now feel confident enough of
that.
Your letters are always very pleasant to us, and that of to-day is very
gratifying.
Yes, we, too, should not have said this was the way in which we would
have had slavery destroyed,--by no means. We wished it by a slow process
which would have cost no life, injured no property, but benefited all as
it went on. But our misguided Southern brethren would have it otherwise,
and so it was. And it is something to be glad of, after all, that it was
done in our day, and we think thoroughly. I take a weekly newspaper, the
“Nation,” which is on the plan of the “Spectator” and the “Saturday
Review,” etc., but we have few good paragraph-writers, and our best
writers will not write. But this paper may interest you, at least in the
letters of its correspondent traveling in the South. I post some
numbers to your address, and I will send some more if you care to see
them. Otherwise the numbers are thrown aside, for I do not keep them.
Even here we have the same sort of liking for Palmerston which the mass
of English have, and no better reason to give for it; and we look with a
sort of fascinated interest upon Gladstone, and expect to see him
premier before long, in a year or two, and we wonder how he will get on
in so critical a position as he will be in. Goldwin Smith I met, but saw
not very much of. He was in very delicate health. Fraser I did not see,
though he was my father-in-law’s guest, and was very much liked by all.
Both had troops of friends. Mrs. Gray and I were in the country when
Fraser was at Mr. Loring’s house on the shore.
The short space left on my sheet must be all devoted to an earnest
exhortation for you to follow your two friends’ example. Come over and
see us, and make our quiet house your home, from which you can travel as
much as you like and see the country in this interesting phase. Pray
think of it seriously. The expense need not be great.
Mrs. Gray, with kindest remembrances, seconds my request, and wishes it
extended to Mrs. Church.
Cordially yours,
ASA GRAY.
TO CHARLES DARWIN.
May 15, 1865.
Your kind letter of the 19th ult. crossed a brief note from me. I am too
much distracted with work at this season to write letters on our
affairs, and if I once begin, I should not know where to stop. You have
always been sympathizing and just, and I appreciate your hearty
congratulations on the success of our just endeavors. You have since had
much more to rejoice over, as well as to sorrow with us. But the noble
manner in which our country has borne itself should give you real
satisfaction. We appreciate, too, the good feeling of England in its
hearty grief at the murder of Lincoln.
Don’t talk about our “hating” you, nor suppose that we want to rob you
of Canada, for which nobody cares.
We think we have been ill-used by you, when you thought us weak and
broken, and when we expected better things. We have learned that we must
be strong to live in peace and comfort with England, otherwise we should
have to eat much dirt. But now that we are on our feet again, all will
go well, and hatred will disappear. Indeed I see little of that.
I must look to the Plantago dimorphism, for, as you say, these plants,
fertilized by the wind, would gain nothing by being dimorphic. No
dimorphic species grows very near here, nor can I now get seeds of P.
Virginica. Perhaps a good look at even dried specimens, under your
hints, may settle the matter.
I was exceedingly interested with the Lythrum paper (but had no time to
write a notice of it), and I wait expectingly for your Climbing plants.
You are the very prince of investigators. We hope presently to make Mrs.
Wedgewood’s acquaintance.
July 24.
I am reading in snatches your admirable paper on Climbing plants,--as
yet only eighty-eight pages of it, and am watching with great interest
all the climbers I have at hand. What a nice piece of work you have made
of it!
I see you explain and illustrate at length the double turn of a caught
tendril. Is it not enough to say that, with both ends fixed, if it
shortens, say by the contraction of one side, it must by mechanical
necessity turn its coil different ways from a neutral point?
Ere this, Mrs. Wedgewood should be back from Canada, but I have not yet
learned that she is so. She was to let me know, and we would have a day
on the shore, where Mr. Loring lives in summer,--a pretty bit of
country. But it is now too late.
I wish she could have been here on Friday, when we welcomed back our
Harvard men who had been in the war,--over five hundred of them,--and
remembered those who had died for their country. What a day we had!
Jefferson Davis richly deserves to be hanged. We are willing to leave
the case in the hands of the government, who must take the
responsibility. If I were responsible, I would have him tried for
treason (the worst of crimes in a republic), convicted, sentenced to
death; and then I think I should commute the penalty, not out of any
consideration for him, but from policy, and for his more complete
humiliation. The only letters I have received expressing a desire to
hang him are from rebeldom itself,--from Alabama. You see slavery is
dead, dead,--an absolute unanimity as to this. The revolted States will
behave as badly as they can, but they are so thoroughly whipped that
they can’t stir, hand or foot, and we are disbanding all our armies,--a
corporal’s guard is enough to hold South Carolina. Seriously, there are
difficult questions before us, but only one result is possible: the
South must be renovated, and Yankeefied.
Well, take good care of yourself, and let me know that you are again in
comfortable condition.
November 6.
I am very glad to hear from you, and to see half your letter of October
19 in your own handwriting is a good sign. I do hope you may get a
comfortable winter, and bring out your next volume without breaking
down.
I am pleased that you approve my abstract of your Climber paper, but
observe it was only of the first part of your elaborate article. But as
to the praise you speak of, I am sure you pay me back with interest.
I lately sent “Silliman” as much more--a large part, indeed, extracts,
which I could not shorten--on the Tendril-bearing part of your paper.
But Dana sent me the proof, with all my long extracts omitted for want
of room. This reduced my article to incoherence, so I begged all to be
laid over for the January number, when I hope to have room. I
entertained our social scientific club here with your article, and all
were greatly interested.
As to climbing roses, they are the strong summer shoots, growing after
flowering, which I find frequently running their heads into dark corners
of the porch over my door, etc.
That is very curious, but quite what I looked for, that dimorphous
species self-fertilized should act like hybrids (sterile or dwarf,
etc.).
You must publish these facts in some brief article.
“Stephens” (Stevens) was a New Yorker; is dead, years ago; wrote most
amusing and popular travels; in Egypt, as well. Central America was his
first and freshest book, but only amusing, as far as I recollect.
So Palmerston is gone. A fine specimen of a John Bull he was, a very
typical specimen. We Yankees can’t help admiring and liking him, though
not for any good he ever did us. But as for his successor, he is a prig,
a juiceless stick.
Don’t you think Adams pays him back nicely for proposing that they
should sit down and rejoice together over the abolition of slavery? Just
see how the world has moved. Turn back to Russell’s _lecture_ to be read
to Mr. Lincoln on occasion of his proclamation of emancipation!
Good-by, my dear, good fellow, and recover health as fast as ever you
can.
Yours affectionately,
A. GRAY.
TO CHARLES WRIGHT.
CAMBRIDGE, June 28, 1865.
I am not going on so any more. A letter from me you shall have. To be
sure I have had none from you since you sailed, but that is no matter.
College and garden and herbarium work together are enough to drive one
mad; but now the college work begins to hold up, and will soon be over.
And as to herbarium, Fendler has at length promised to come at the end
of the summer and help me--all winter at least, perhaps longer....
Oh, yes! I have yours of “Habana,” May 9th, with your shipboard studies
on the variations of Chapman and Grisebach. Well, sometimes one wrong,
sometimes the other; sometimes a difference as to who the author of a
book is,--Michaux, whose name is on the work, Richard, who wrote it
incog.
I inclose my last from Grisebach. I am hoping to arrange to have the
catalogue of Cuba plants printed or stereotyped at Göttingen, for the
Smithsonian contributions, and have written Grisebach to cultivate his
Spanish influence in the view of having that government at length
patronize effectively the bringing out of a Flora Cubensis, by Wright
and Grisebach.
You owe this letter partly to the general disturbance of an uneasy
conscience, and partly to a sudden cold caught by carelessness in hot
weather, which unfits me for more driving work. It is getting better. I
hope to write you again before I catch a new one.
July 4, Eighty-ninth Anniversary
of the United States.
Yours of June 9-21 reached me the very day that I mailed my last missive
to you, a good long letter. Here is a fine letter from you, showing how
busy and active a man you are. Pretty well for a man of your age to be
shinning up palm-trees, and barking your shins. Be careful! Grisebach
will take your criticisms all right, no doubt. Yesterday I got the
inclosed from him. Very well. Is the Cuban M. Sauvalle?...
Dr. Hooker has sent me a specimen of Welwitschia, that queer African
tree a foot high, many years old, and with only two leaves, and those
all in shreds....
September 5.
... Dear, good Sir William Hooker is dead,--of diphtheria,--on the 15th
August, six weeks over eighty years. I have no news yet from the family;
but learn indirectly that Dr. Hooker is sick, “a gastric affection.” I
do hope it is nothing dangerous....
* * * * *
Dr. Gray wrote for the “American Journal of Science”[61] a memoir of
his dear friend, Sir William Hooker, in which, after describing his
immense labors in publications of so many different branches, he says:--
“Our survey of what Sir William Hooker did for science would be
incomplete indeed if it were confined to his published works, numerous
and important as they are, and the wise and efficient administration
through which, in a short space of twenty-four years, a queen’s flower
and kitchen garden and pleasure grounds have been transformed into an
imperial botanical establishment of unrivaled interest and value.
Account should be taken of the spirit in which he worked, of the
researches and explorations he promoted, of the aid and encouragement he
extended to his fellow-laborers, especially to young and rising
botanists, and of the means and appliances he gathered for their use no
less than his own.
“The single-mindedness with which he gave himself to his scientific
work, and the conscientiousness with which he lived for science while he
lived by it, were above all praise. Eminently fitted to shine in society
... he never dissipated his time and energies in the round of
fashionable life, but ever avoided the social prominence and worldly
distractions which some sedulously seek....
“Nor was there in him the least manifestation of a tendency to
overshadow the science with his own importance, or of indifference to
its general advancement....
“To the wide circle of botanists in which he has long filled so
conspicuous a place, ... it is superfluous to say that Sir William
Hooker was one of the most admirable of men, a model Christian
gentleman.”
Dr. Gray was appointed by Mr. Peabody himself a member of the “Board of
Trustees of the Peabody Museum of American Archæology and Ethnology in
connection with Harvard University” when it was founded in 1866. The
Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, offering the resolutions in memory of Dr. Gray,
at the meeting in 1888, says, “From first to last, as I can bear
witness, he was a most faithful and valuable member of our Board; he was
always at our meetings and took an active interest in all our work. In
1874, on the death of Jeffries Wyman, he voluntarily assumed the
curatorship of our Museum, and did excellent service until the
appointment of Professor Putnam.”
TO R. W. CHURCH.
Sunday evening, February 25, 1866.
The number of the “Guardian” followed closely upon your note of the 9th
instant, and I have just risen from the reading of your review of “Ecce
Homo.” I knew nothing of this remarkable book, beyond having seen the
title. The notice in the “Spectator” had escaped me, or rather, through
a change in the order of circulation in our book club, that number of
“Spectator” has not yet come round to me. But I have to thank you
heartily for calling my attention to it, and especially for sending me
your own published and well-considered thoughts of it. I greatly admire
your analysis of the book, and what I thus learn of it greatly impresses
me. I shall procure it without delay. I long, not only to read it
myself, but to put it into the hands of some friends. Such a production
is timely, and will be very useful. I hope the unknown writer will go
on, and as he goes on bring out, in the same fresh and untechnical way,
all the essentials of Christian belief. Even if he does not, it will
have great value as it is; and one will be curious to see how he can
fail to raise the superstructure which this foundation seems to be
designed to bear. I have long thought it very important that these
subjects and the whole range of connected questions need to be treated
by a layman from an unprofessional point of view, and quite apart from
theological language or conventional modes of thought, say by a lawyer
of a judicial turn of mind, or by a physicist or naturalist, who
understands and feels the scientific difficulties, and the prevalent
state of mind, especially among scientific people, which most divines
persist in ignoring.
As soon as I get this book, and have attentively read it, I shall
probably wish to speak of it again to you. If I find that it does not
receive notice in this country, I will see that attention is in some way
called to it. But I should think it likely to attract attention in this
country at once.
I have never thanked you for your letter of December 6, and for the
hope, faint though it be, that you may come over and see us some day.
Pray don’t give over the thought, and some day you may chance to bring
it about. Cambridge is not a bad point from which to sally forth in
little explorations of American life....
We have much anxiety as to what we can do with the South now we have got
it; and our President Johnson is not a Lincoln. The breach which has
just occurred, and which may cause great trouble, has been feared for
some time; and the blame is to be assigned in part to the indiscretion
and impracticability of a few of the advanced Republican leaders. We
have survived worse scenes and darker prospects, and shall surmount
these troubles, I trust, in time. But here things cannot always be done
in the wisest way....
I imagine Earl Russell is safe for a year or two, since no other minstry
could well be found to replace him. I should like, before long, to see
Gladstone at the helm.
TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.
... The small parcel from Andersson[62] has come. From him I have a nice
oil copy of the portrait of Linnæus,[63] painted by Madame Andersson.
Chapman[64] is here, excellent, loyal man all through; hates
copperheads; is soon going back, so that you can write him at
Apalachicola for Junci. I have told him what you are at with the genus.
March 20, 1866.
I have got Mann[65] well installed in Fendler’s place, and he is doing
well, doing botanical work, too, on his Sandwich Island plants; will
bring out an Enum. Pl. Hawaiens....
July 30.
Back to-day from a coasting voyage of four or five days, I find yours of
25th instant....
I have promised Clinton[66] I will go to Buffalo, to the meeting
reviving the American Association; then back home, to work, by 20th
August.
About the Prussian war I think as you do. About domestic matters I have
not changed at all my mode of thinking, as I know. But no time for these
things....
TO CHARLES WRIGHT.
May 19, 1866.
... I am so driven, so distracted. Bless your stars you are not a
professor, and president of Academy, and have a botanical garden and no
gardener well trained, and have students, and everything. My
correspondence all in arrears, and I am getting hardened and don’t
care....
You know I am always hard pressed and hard worked at this season; and
this year it is far worse than ever. Besides the bother of my classes,
unusually bothering on the new arrangement, there is a new gardener and
a great deficit or rather deficiency of funds to carry on the Garden, so
I have to run that concern pretty much myself. And, to crown all, my
little new French gardener, in his anxiety over the work, has got into a
state of nervous excitement, gets no sleep nights, and if not soon
relieved will, I fear, become truly insane.... If he continues half
crazed, you may expect me crazed next. Then there are some special
scientific students working up here, to add to my botheration.
So do not you “growl” at me now if you can help it....
Alas, your Algæ will be too late for dear Harvey. He is dying of
consumption, and we may hear of the end any day. This is all at present
from
Your old, worn-out friend,
ASA GRAY.
TO GEORGE BENTHAM.
June 12, 1866.
We have as many asters as we can manage in America, and in the northern
hemisphere of the Old World. I pray you keep out at least Australian
things if it be possible.
I envy you more and more in being able to devote yourself to systematic
botany steadily, without the distraction and sad consumption of time in
professional and administrative duties and avocations, which make havoc
of the opportunities of most botanists, and make their work which they
are able to do far less valuable than it would otherwise be. And you
work on with such quiet determination! The lamented losses of the last
year or two have already made you the Nestor, though I cannot think you
old. I do hope you have a fair number of good working years yet, in
which you can make your great experience tell to utmost advantage....
Much against my will, I have this summer to work upon a new edition of
my “Manual of the Northern United States Botany,” to which there is much
to be done. I shall not, however, so recast the work as I should if I
could defer it till I had blocked out the outlines of a similar but much
larger volume for all the United States of America, and till your
“Genera Flora” had been carried much farther.
What do you intend for this summer? A Continental excursion?
Ever, my dear Bentham, most cordially yours,
A. GRAY.
Dr. Farlow, in his memoir in “Proceedings of the American Academy,”
speaks of the great interest which Dr. Gray took at this time in
observing tendrils and climbing plants. The glass corridor then
connecting the herbarium and his study was very much occupied by
climbers, and notes were constantly taken of times of revolution, etc.
He says, “Dr. Gray hardly ever passed in or out of the herbarium without
stroking (patting them on the back by way of encouraging them, it almost
seemed) the tendrils of the climbers on the walls and porch; and on the
announcement that a student had discovered another case of
cross-fertilization in the garden, he would rush out bare-headed and
breathless, like a schoolboy, to see the thing with his own critical
eyes.”
TO CHARLES DARWIN.
May 7, 1866.
I am so delighted to get a letter from you, written with your own hand,
and to see that you can work again a little.
I have no new facts about the influence of pollen on fruits, nor about
influence of grafts.
I have got a little plant of Bignonia capreolata growing here. I punched
a lot of holes into the shady side of a lath; the tendrils thrust their
ends in; also into a cornice, but did not stay; either the movement of
the stem or tendril, or, at length, the shortening of the body of the
tendril by coiling, which it does promptly, brought all away. I have
stuck some cotton on to the lath at the proper height for the next pair
of tendrils. The tendril near by stuck fast at once, and is beginning to
develop the disks, and now the tendril of the other leaf has bent
abruptly round, and seized the cotton with avidity. Are there any new
observations I can make?
The Fenian scare, we have supposed here, was mainly a plan of certain
rogues here to fleece their poor countrymen and women, poor servants and
working-men! Nothing more could come of it. But I sadly fear many here
have enjoyed the trouble it has given and the alarm it has excited,
especially among our neighbors in New Brunswick, who rather enjoyed our
woes two or three years ago.
Yes, slavery is thoroughly done for. We have a bad set to deal with at
the South; and holding wolf by the ears is no pleasant nor hopeful
occupation, as the temper of the wolf does not improve under the
holding. But we shall jangle out of the difficulty in time, even with
such a crooked character as our President to deal with also.
Bring out the book on Variation soon.
July 3.
... So there is war on the Continent; really a war “for empire,” as Lord
Russell said our war was. Now our war was a simple necessity; this
Continental one a crime, in which all parties participate. I wish, but
do not expect, Prussia to be crushed as one result. I wish all her coast
could be annexed to Denmark! However, it is no affair of ours, being on
the other side of the Atlantic. And when a nation can get strength and
power by robbery, it will be likely to rob.
August 7.
... You should study Wyman’s observations in his own papers. He is
always careful to keep his inferences close to his facts, and is as good
an experimenter, I judge, as he is an observer. He has a new series of
observations to publish. I think that he has not at all pronounced in
favor of spontaneous generation, but I will bet on his experiments
against Pasteur, any day.
TO CHARLES WRIGHT.
November 23.
You may well complain that I neglect you. But--
1. I had, till now, nothing special to write.
2. I have been daily expecting to hear from Grisebach, and have sheets
to send you, or the copies via Westermann. But not a bit of it yet. The
conquest of Hanover by the Prussians seems to have annihilated
Grisebach.
3. I have been, am so--_busy_ is not the word for it. I can’t think of
any to express it. I suppose that I have now lying by me more than fifty
unanswered letters, though I keep answering the most pressing as fast
nearly as they come in. But the rest get neglected, inevitably. I read
your letters and follow your work in Cuba with interest. I want you to
get all the plants you can (but I see not that you can exhaust Cuba),
and then come and settle down here, and work up, as you only can, a nice
Flora Cubana. That you are bound to do, just as I am to do the Flora of
North America. I see some faint prospect that I may yet, and before very
long, be able to sit down to it. But you and I are bound to do these two
things yet!...
The seeds I put loose in this sheet are Cinchona officinalis. Get the
tree introduced into your cooler region, that is, the Caffetals of east
Cuba, and the tree will be commercially important in time, and you will
be a benefactor of your species. Enough for once.
Ever your old friend,
A. GRAY.
TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.
November 20, 1866.
DEAR ENGELMANN,--Yes, I have a heap of unanswered letters from you. But
I have not one moment of time.
I have copy of “Manual” in printer’s hands up to Compositæ, and am only
now two days ahead; have been only two hours ahead day after day!! It is
awful! So much other work too!...
If I could get five hundred to one thousand more a year I would at once
resign professorship and salary....
I am well, never more hearty; but worked like a coach-horse. I have got
my fund raised for the Garden: small, but we have now clear $2,500 or
$2,600 a year for Garden.
February 27, 1867.
How much I am indebted to you! No one else who undertakes to help me
ever makes out much, at least to save me time and trouble....
I have not time to write details of the little I know about the National
Academy. But I have seen enough to make it clear that I should not be
taking any more responsibility about it. So last month I sent my
resignation. They have put me on the list of Honorary Members. The
American Academy is as much as I want to attend to, and I do my duty to
society in looking well after that....
TO A. DE CANDOLLE.
September 10, 1866.
... The war near you was sharp and quick. Switzerland is as fortunately
placed as any small nation can be, when surrounded by strong ones; but
you see that in this world only strength can be relied on. See what
indignity small and weak nations have to suffer. I trust present peace
may last to consolidate a new Germany. But if not, you may have to dread
a more general upturning on the Continent.
October 21, 1867.
... Your analysis of the whole subject of rules in nomenclature I think
is sound and lawyer-like, or rather _judicial_, as well as judicious.
There are dangers and inconveniences on every side, and good sense and
discretion are needed in the application of these as of all rules....
Very faithfully yours,
ASA GRAY.
TO GEORGE BENTHAM.
January 21, 1867.
MY DEAR BENTHAM,--Many thanks for your kind remembrance of us in your
letter at the end of the year, which reached me only three or four days
ago. I avail myself of the first foreign post since to return, with Mrs.
Gray’s love, our heartiest good wishes to Mrs. Bentham and yourself, and
I trust you will be able to keep up yet, for a good many precious years,
the steady botanical work which you make so telling....
I have no doubt of the full and entire correctness of the principles you
work on; and the Kew Floras and the “Genera Plantarum” will more than
anything else determine the public botanical opinion and mode of working
for the next generation. But I suspect that there will remain after all
a great many monotypic genera (consider how many of the most distinct
genera are so, or nearly so); and I imagine it is best to work without
prejudice for or against them.
I dare promise I shall be satisfied with all you have done in Compositæ.
As to Umbelliferæ, I wish you joy of the job, and do hope you will
reduce the genera twenty per cent at least. I never could take the least
satisfaction in them. I never could collate our Umbelliferæ with
European genera, and I have no clear conception of more than half a
dozen of our genera....
Ever, dear Bentham, yours most cordially,
A. GRAY.
TO CHARLES DARWIN.
CAMBRIDGE, March 26, 1867.
This is to acknowledge yours of February 28.
You see I have printed your queries[67] privately (fifty copies), as the
best way of putting them where useful answers may be expected. Most of
them will go into the hands of agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau, etc.
Others to persons I or Wyman may know and rely on. I wish I had had them
sooner. My crony Wyman has been two months in Florida, but will be home
again before I could send to him.
I did not write the article in the “Nation” on Popular Lecturing, though
it contains so many things I have said over and over that it startled
me. Then it hits so many nails square on the head that I should think it
could be written only in Cambridge or hereabouts.
It is generally supposed to be written by a person in New York, but I
suspect a person near by here,--only suspect....
Yes, Magnolia seeds hang out awhile in autumn, finally stretch and break
the threads of spiral vessels. Whether birds eat them I don’t know. They
look enticing and have a pulpy coat, are bitter and spicy.
Shall I send you more of these circulars?
I shall send to Indian people too.
TO CHARLES WRIGHT.
April 2, 1867.
I sent your twenty dollars to aid the subscription for the starving
Southerners. There have been handsome sums raised for them in the
Northern States. But I am afraid you must get most imperfect and
one-sided statements of the doings of Congress by the tone of your
letters, and decidedly need enlightenment. It is the President, not
Congress, that needs to learn the Constitution and the laws of the land.
And your Southern loyal friends, if you could get voice of them, would
beg Congress to take even more urgent steps for their protection and
defense by reconstruction. However, things seem to be going on now
pretty satisfactorily. The President is sinking into his deserved
insignificance, and the leading rebels are coming out decidedly more
sensibly than many of their professed Northern friends. And we hope,
therefore, that they may begin to give some fair chance to the loyal men
of the South to be heard and to get their rights, which have been
indeed shamefully trampled upon by the President and the dominant party
at the South....
I have not time to answer all your interesting botanical notes, and can
only thank you for them. I hope you will continue to keep well.
Our spring is late and wet. There is still quite a covering of snow in
the garden, and we have had a deal of it in the winter, and wretched
walking and getting about in every way. Happy you, in the tropics.
You ask who Austin[68] is. He was an old protégé of Dr. Torrey; lives
now in New Jersey, and studies Lemnaceæ and Hepaticæ.
... You will be more delighted than I am to know that the Democrats have
probably carried Connecticut. But I am not much the contrary; for the
Republicans are too many in Congress for their own good, or ours, and it
secures the defeat of Barnum for Congress; as it should be....
April 8.
I have been having a Sunday’s work over your plants.
It grieves my heart and will grieve yours badly when I tell you that
your boxes were put under a cargo of wet sugar, which drained into them,
and have ruined the collection.
... As to specimens to dispose of, say only one half or one third of the
whole mass is left fit for it. Oh dear! God grant you patience! Will you
have the courage to set to work over again?
I will try next to tell you what is worst.
Ever your disconsolate,
A. GRAY.
TO WILLIAM M. CANBY.[69]
July 8, 1867.
MY DEAR CANBY, ... I am charmed with what you say of Dionæa, can confirm
some of it, and believe all the rest. Never mind the anatomy of the leaf
now--little promise from that; but do go on with experiments on feeding,
and record them carefully, and publish when ready.
I am going to send your letter to Darwin, who will be delighted, and
will probably suggest experiments. He has an eminently suggestive mind.
I suppose you know the slow way Drosera rotundifolia catches flies,
doubtless for same purpose, though it can absorb the juices only through
its bristles. I always thought it took in only the gases disengaged by
putrefaction.
If you don’t know the trick of Drosera, which you should study, too, I
will tell you, if you write to me at Sauquoit, Oneida County, New York.
SAUQUOIT, N. Y., July 17.
I have here yours of 13th.
If on leaf of Drosera rotundifolia, in good healthy condition, you put a
small fly--somewhat crippled is surer--the sticky pellucid glands will
hold him fast. By degrees (I have never seen it under ten or twelve
hours at least) some of the bristles outside, which have not touched the
fly, will turn inward and bring their sticky tip against the insect;
later still others and more external ones turn in, and so the fly is
bound by many liliputian bands. As it putrefies, I wonder if the leaf
merely takes its chance of getting some of the disengaged gases, or
whether it reabsorbs the clear fluid of the glands, charged now with
some animal matter.
In transplanting some Drosera into a pan with wet moss, the older leaves
may not work well; but the new ones developed soon will do better. Pray
experiment upon this and Dionæa. I wonder if there ever were series of
intermediate states between the inefficient Drosera, and the expert
Dionæa....
August 21.
... I inclose half a letter which came from Darwin this morning. I hope
you will go on with work on Dionæa....
C. DARWIN TO A. GRAY.
(Half of letter referred to above.)
DOWN, BROMLEY, KENT, August 8.
MY DEAR GRAY,--I have been glad to see Mr. Canby’s interesting letter on
Dionæa, and I thank you for sending it; but unfortunately the facts are
not new to me. Several years ago I observed the secretion of the
“gastric juices” and the close adhesion of the two sides of the leaf
when a fly was caught. I keep my notes in such an odd fashion that it
would take me some time to find them. I am almost sure I ascertained the
acid reaction of the secretion and its antiseptic power, but I cannot
remember whether in this, or in analogous cases, I found its subsequent
reabsorption. This letter fires me up to complete and publish on
Drosera, Dionæa, etc., but when I shall get time I know not. I am
working like a slave to complete my book.
TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.
July 6, 1867.
... Well, I have been free from much college work for ten days, and am
quite free after Wednesday morning.
I seem as well as possible, bright and clear, and should be content just
to visit my old mother and come right back to work on Californian
plants, which I have been looking at for a few days. But my wife says I
shall take four weeks, and on being weighed I find that my former
140-143 lbs. is reduced to 131.
So I must waste time and money in traveling, which I am reconciled to,
as Mrs. Gray needs it much.
From Oneida County, New York, I am going (with Mrs. G.) to drive into
northwest and central Pennsylvania and then visit a sister in Michigan.
Mrs. Gray insists that we must go to Chicago, which she wishes to see,
though I do not. I hate towns, especially new ones. Only think how near
I shall be to you!
So you saw old Bigelow, who is quite delighted with Shaw’s grounds, etc.
Torrey has just made me a little visit. Good, kind soul he is....
August 15.
We got home three days ago. Hot weather broke down my wife’s courage, as
I feared, and we went no farther west than Tecumseh, Michigan; made a
short visit to Sullivant at Columbus, then meandered through west and
north of Pennsylvania to central New York again, and hearing of Mrs.
Gray’s father’s illness came rapidly home....
I am very well; have put on three pounds’ weight.
We must go and see you and all the great West at some proper season,
spring or late fall....
I germinated for two years Nelumbium, but soon lose them. If you can,
send me some seeds this fall to try once more....
TO GEORGE BENTHAM.
October 14, 1867.
... Yes, I did receive your address,[70] read it hastily, and sent it to
“Silliman’s Journal” to be reprinted. It was too late for the September
number, but will be the leading article in the November number. I have
read a proof and am daily expecting a printed sheet, which I can send to
you, with one or two little remarks. I was exceedingly pleased with it;
so is Professor Henry. We both wondered how you could have so exactly
hit not one, but several nails on the head, as you have done. It will be
much read here, and will be truly useful.
You remind me that I ought to have criticised your working of Australian
Compositæ. The trouble is, that, except North American genera, these
things have long been quite out of my head. It will be unsafe for me to
approve or otherwise till I can get at work a little over them, which it
is not likely I can at present. I just fancy that in your dislike of
monotypic genera--which you abhor as nature does a vacuum--you may have
lumped up the angiantheous genera rather too much.
I am straining every nerve to get into a position to get at a synopsis
of North American plants, and my present work upon Bolander’s collection
is a part of the preparation. But I cannot lay the corner-stone till
college work is over, next July. Meanwhile I want suggestions as to
form, and how to condense references to the utmost and crowd a page, yet
leaving it clear and comely. When I have got the thing blocked out, and
have worked up a part, then Mrs. G. and I hope to go over and see you,
and to stay a good long while. Adieu, till next week.
Ever yours,
A. GRAY.
TO R. W. CHURCH.
December 5, 1867.
Before the year closes I mean you shall have a note from me, to renew on
my part an intercourse which has been interrupted through negligence of
mine. I find I get more and more overloaded as I grow older, and I dare
say you find it the same. Still we must exchange a word now and then.
I have to tell you of the severe loss we have had in the death, in
October, of Mrs. Gray’s good and kind father, Mr. Loring. He and my wife
were very much to each other, and in former years had been unusually
intimate companions; and his death at seventy-three, quite unexpected
till within a few weeks of the event, is very much felt. Mrs. Gray’s own
health, too, is but poor, though on the whole I trust it is becoming
firmer.
If you see your friend Mr. Fraser (whom I, unfortunately, did not) you
may learn from him what manner of man Mr. Loring was. I wish I knew him,
to say to him how highly we value a letter he lately addressed to Mrs.
Loring, and which I read yesterday,--so full of sympathy and just
appreciation.
Mr. Fraser, you may be sure, is very much thought of here.
I hope that Dr. Hooker, of Kew, has sent on to you the numbers of the
“Nation,” which I have for a year or more regularly posted to him,
originally requesting he should do so. But it is quite likely the busy
man has forgotten all about it.
For myself, I have passed my fifty-seventh anniversary, in firm health,
feeling my age only in a treacherous memory--as respects names, etc.,
not as to events or friends. The memory of our delightful visit to
Oxford is ever fresh.
TO CHARLES DARWIN.
February 24, 1868.
The other evening here I discoursed at our private club, by giving them
an abstract of the chapters on Inheritance and Pangenesis; the former
for Professor Bowen’s benefit. He and Agassiz took it all very well; and
pangenesis seemed to strike all of us as being as good an hypothesis as
one can now make....
On inside of leaf of Dionæa see the copious glands for secreting gastric
juice.
... I do not wonder at your book[71] being taken up at once, by the
great numbers of people who need and understand it, and the thousands
who jump at anything written by so notorious a writer as you are. The
“Origin” will sell anything; and I believe people will get more for
their money in this book than in even that, if they care for facts,
which generally they do not.
May 25.
I want to write you a long letter, but the time is not to be had now.
Many thanks for yours of May 8.
My notice of your book in the “Nation” was not intended to have anything
in it, except for the groundlings; was only to make the book known and
understood, a light affair.
My preface was written at the publishers’ request simply because yours
had not come. The fellows put in both. The edition is not very nicely
printed. Judging from the newspaper notices I think the book is taking
famously. That agricultural newspaper is taken by the hundred thousand
in the country. As to close of my article, to match close of your
book,--you see plainly I was put on the defense by your reference to an
old hazardous remark of mine. I found your stone-house argument
unanswerable in substance (for the notion of design must after all rest
mostly on faith, and on accumulation of adaptations, etc.); so all I
could do was to find a vulnerable spot in the shaping of it, fire my
little shot, and run away in the smoke.
Of course I understand your argument perfectly, and feel the weight of
it.
We were intensely amused at the Edinburgh man, who suggests that I could
easily smash you into little pieces! I wish he may live to see it done!
I am half dead with drudgery, half of it at least for other people; see
no relief but to break up, and run over, with wife, who needs a change,
to your side of the water for a good long while.
TO R. W. CHURCH.
June 22, 1868.
I have to send you--in a hasty line--my best thanks for remembering me
so kindly: 1. In your letter of January 17, which I am so tardy in
responding to.
2. The copy of Hooker edited by you, which I was pleased to have.
3. Your sermon at St. Mary’s, which Mrs. Gray and I both read with much
interest. I admired your handling of an important topic, and the solid
strength which comes from moderation of statement. It reminded me much
of one of our best sermonizers here, who, though a good deal heterodox
(I am sorry to say), treats such subjects more impressively than any one
else and much in that way, his guarded understatements or concessions
telling heavily in the argument.
I read and think of nothing but botany of late, having been too hard
pressed for a long while. But last Sunday I read with interest the
latter part of Mr. Gladstone’s essay on “Ecce Homo.”
There is something which seems to me very admirable and attachable about
Gladstone. I wonder if his church friends and supporters will mostly
drop him at the coming struggle, for his action looking to the
disestablishment of the Irish church.
But the gist of my present note is to say, that I have got a year’s
leave of absence, and Mrs. Gray and I expect to cross over to England in
two months.
I find I must break up a set of engagements and of work, mainly for
others, which absorbs too much of my time, and Mrs. Gray’s health makes
me anxious to avoid another winter here, at present. The change will be
good for us both. We mean to pass the whole autumn in England, mostly at
Kew, and most of the winter in Italy and perhaps Egypt, where Mrs.
Loring, now on the Continent (tell Mr. Fraser), expects to be, and we
may be able to join the party, in a climate which may be advantageous
after such a winter as our last.
Very sincerely yours,
ASA GRAY.