CHAPTER VII.

TRAVEL IN EUROPE AND AMERICA.

1868-1880.

Dr. Gray made his fourth journey to Europe in the fall of 1868. He
landed in September, and went at once to Kew, where he remained most of
the time at work in the herbarium until November. He made a short round
of visits, first to Mr. Church, who was then rector of Whatley, a
village of Somersetshire, where, with Mrs. Gray, he enjoyed to the full
his stay in one of the loveliest parts of rural England. They went also
to Down to pay a visit to Darwin, and with them went Dr. and Mrs.
Hooker, with their two eldest children, and Professor Tyndall. Those
were days never to be forgotten. In November, Dr. and Mrs. Gray joined
some family friends in Paris, with whom they went to Egypt and passed
the winter on the Nile, taking the longest vacation, Dr. Gray said, he
had ever enjoyed. Upon their return they passed through Italy,
Switzerland, and Germany, where old botanical acquaintances were
renewed, and some persons seen whom he had known only by correspondence.
In England he again worked at Kew, and repeated the visits at Whatley
and Down, sailing for America, November 9, 1869.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

DOWN, BROMLEY, KENT, October 29, 1868.

In all these busy days I have neglected your kind letter of October 6,
partly in the expectation that I might be able to announce to you
definitely the time we should reach Paris. I can even now only say that
we expect to be there between the 15th and the 20th of November, and I
think we shall have just about those days (15-20) in Paris. If we can
meet, very pleasant it will be; but I dare hardly expect it. My own and
Mrs. Gray’s parcels for you shall be left at Masson’s in case we do not
see you. I am making, with Mrs. Gray, a pleasant week of holiday, most
of it here with Mr. Darwin, whose health just now is, for him,
remarkably good.

I mean to keep you apprised of our movements; and we may, by some nice
adjustments, meet in Germany. At least, and best of all, in Switzerland,
which we shall be likely to reach at midsummer. But I have matured no
plans for anything beyond the winter.

… I should like to visit Montpellier and to see Planchon, but we
shall, when we reach the Mediterranean, be attached to a party, time
will be short, and our movements no longer free.

Bentham is working at Kew with his accustomed regularity and diligence.
Hooker’s time is much occupied with matters of administration….

It must be a great satisfaction to you, that your son not only takes to
botany, but shows so great talent. I hope the line may not fail, but
that De Candolle botanists may flourish in the next century as they have
in the nineteenth….

* * * * *

The death of Horace Mann, mentioned in the next letter, Dr. Gray felt
as a great personal loss, as well as a loss to science. He was a young
man of much promise, and he felt on leaving home that, in putting him in
charge of the herbarium and of the college classes, he could not have
made any arrangement more promising and satisfactory. He had counted
much on his future help as assistant, and anticipated that he would
become a very valuable aid in carrying on his work, for he had patience,
conscientiousness, and steady diligence. Mr. Mann’s lungs were weak, and
his health required care, but nothing of immediate danger was feared.
But consumption developed rapidly, and he died after a few weeks’
illness.

Charles Wright was also working at Cambridge, and took charge of the
herbarium and garden during Dr. Gray’s absence.

TO CHARLES WRIGHT.

HYÈRES, EAST OF TOULON, November 29, 1868.

I had yesterday at Marseilles a letter from Mrs. Mann, conveying the sad
intelligence of her son’s death. Very sad it is….

My heart bleeds for poor Mrs. Mann, who was wrapped up in Horace, and
who feels it as the greatest of disappointments. To me, also, it is a
very great disappointment of long-cherished hopes.

I expect to find letters at Alexandria when we reach there. We sail from
Marseilles a week hence, going meanwhile to see some of this famous
shore further east….

CAIRO, December 16, 1868.

Thank you heartily for your letter of November 13. I am here learning
some subtropical botany, seeing trees growing which you have in Cuba,
etc., Parkinsonia, Schinus molle, Carob, etc. Off up the Nile
to-morrow….

In brief, I want to retain you permanently as my fidus Achates. You are
to have supreme control of the Garden. When I get home we will see what
can be done. You will have to cut off Cuba till then, but can work at
Flora Cubensis a good deal of the time. As far as my means can go, you
shall be made as comfortable as possible….

Arrangements were made to have H. sweep and keep clean the herbarium,
and Mrs. L. to scrub when needed. I fear the herbarium may have been
left to get dusty and untidy. Please take it in hand; ask L. as to
getting H., or some one, to sweep regularly; let no dusty work that can
be helped be done in the large herbarium room. Keep coal-ashes dust from
the fire from getting in, etc. Spare no expense and pains to keep down
dust and dirt….

As to dampness in herbarium, look out according to your judgment. Air
occasionally by leaving open doors of cabinets when a good fire is on,
or a dry day out. The north corner of the herbarium is the only place
that dampness gathers in, except the shelves next the floors. Well, do
the best you can. Good-by….

TO JOHN TORREY.

ON BOARD THE STEAMER POONAH,
MARSEILLES HARBOR, December 5, 1868.

We started from Paris a few days before the rest, and before Charles
Loring had arrived. We changed the cold north for the bland south in one
night, going from Paris to Avignon, where I had the pleasure of showing
J. olive groves, old walled towns, and all sorts of mediæval things;
then at Nîmes I introduced her to the old Roman world in the
well-preserved amphitheatre and the beautiful temple called Maison
Carrée, ruins of temples, baths, pavements, and all that,–a charming
place, of which I had very pleasant memories almost thirty years old.
Then, to revive old memories, we went on to Montpellier; had a nice day
with Martins[72] and Planchon[73] (whose photographs, as well as
Brongniart’s, I have for you); then we came on via Arles to Marseilles,
within an hour of the rest of the party coming direct from Paris. They
all sailed next day; we waited a week, so as to get a view of this
interesting shore, which we should not be likely ever to visit again. So
we went first to Hyères, where we first saw orange groves laden with
fruit and tall date-palms, and eucalyptus-trees forty feet high, and all
such nice things; roses by the ten thousand in hedges…. Toward evening
on the third day, we took a carriage, drove through Mentone along the
coast road to Monaco; passing by the modern and gaming district, we went
into the old fortified town to lodge; went round the ramparts in the
morning, saw more agaves than ever before, and the steep rock 300 feet
high covered with opuntias, having stems as thick as my leg, not to say
my body. Next morning took railroad through Nice to Antibes; visited M.
Thuret,[74] the botanist, by appointment; a most charming man, a French
Protestant; his carriage waited for us at the station; a delightful
place, which made us crazy with delight, 3,000 or more species of the
most interesting plants growing in the open air, where frost is seldom
seen; plants and trees which starve in conservatories here grow to vast
size; all kinds of things I never saw growing anyhow before! Roses by
the thousand. Oh, what a delightful time! But after a nice déjeuner at
two o’clock, we were off soon after three to the station, and so reached
Marseilles at nine P.M. yesterday.

I have left no room to speak of the most sad loss of Mann, very sad. How
it will affect me I cannot tell now, but suppose it will bring us home
next fall….

TO R. W. CHURCH.

ON THE NILE, BETWEEN
GIRGEH AND DENDERA, January 3, 1869.

It is only by an effort of memory that I can recall that seemingly far
distant week, with which my narrative must commence, when we went, on
Monday, to Nice by railway, and on Tuesday (taking my college colleague,
Professor Lovering), by a carriage over the finest part of the Corniche
road to Mentone, and, dropping our companion there, three miles further
to Palazzo Orengo, just within the present Italian frontier; a house
several hundred years old, which Mr. Hanbury, our host, has recently
restored and is beautifying. It is near the base of a steep acclivity,
projecting a little into the sea and commanding a view of Mentone and
Monaco with the mountains behind and westward far beyond them on the one
side, Ventimiglia and Bordighera on the other, and seaward on rare
occasions giving a view of the mountains of Corsica, over a hundred
miles distant. One of those rare occasions, well-timed for us, we
enjoyed the next morning before sunrise, and again in the afternoon. All
that day (Wednesday) we enjoyed the place and its surroundings, and the
pleasant society of Mr. and Mrs. Hanbury. They are much liked by the
people of the hamlet and district, for whom they are doing a great deal,
establishing a school for girls, with the hearty coöperation of the
curé. Wednesday, after dinner, this good-will of the neighborhood was
shown in a truly Italian way. The advocate of Ventimiglia, having some
business relative to land to transact with Mr. Hanbury, stayed to
dinner, and then asked permission to read and present a poem which he
had composed in compliment to Mrs. (Catherine) Hanbury; it being St.
Catherine’s Day. It was delivered with Italian grace and fervor, and an
Italian lady, now one of the family, told us that the versification was
very choice. Thursday, the grounds and house were thrown open, and a
collation provided for all the English people at Mentone that Mr.
Moggridge chose to conduct. Earlier I walked over to Mentone to make
some calls, especially upon young Moggridge,[75] whom you know, and who,
I am sorry to say, had been seriously ill, and was still confined to his
bed. I found him busy over the flowers and plants which his most
attentive and energetic father brings to him from all the mountains
around, cheerful and happy, but I fear he will hardly be able to
complete his illustrations of the botany of Mentone. Late in the
afternoon, after enjoying the picnic, a carriage took us to Mentone, and
thence to Monaco, where we slept, in order that the next day might not
be too fatiguing to Mrs. G. Friday, the railway, newly completed along
the shore to Monaco, took us through Villa Franca to Nice, and to
Antibes, where I had arranged to have some hours with M. Thuret (a
charming man and excellent botanist) and his incomparable garden…. The
only thing lacking was the magnificent view of the snowy Maritime Alps
(of which I saw a sketch made by young Moggridge) which the house
commands in good weather, but which was hidden from us by clouds and
mist. We reached Marseilles and our hotel in the evening; had Saturday
for our preparations, and at evening went on board the Poonah, which was
to start for Alexandria early Sunday morning. I need not say anything
about the scenery of the region we traversed, nor of the pleasure of
first seeing date-palms and eucalypti, etc., and orange and lemon trees
in groves, laden with blossom and fruit, and long hedges of roses in
full bloom in December.

… Fine weather and smooth water from Sunday to Thursday evening,
especially during the long and lovely day which opened with Stromboli
and the other Lipari Islands directly before us, and the snowy summit of
Etna in the distance, and closed with the sun setting behind the
southern base of Etna, and an inverted pyramid of smoke resting on its
summit. The day was perfect, and, not to speak of anything else, Etna
was in full view all day long, except when hidden for an hour by the
cliffs behind Messina. The latter end of the voyage was uncomfortable
enough, the sea very heavy, and glad we were to land at Alexandria,
Saturday noon, December 12, a showery day, the streets deep with mud and
filth. Early Sunday morning we were off by rail for Cairo, where we
joined the main body, awaiting our arrival, and I had time for the
English service in the afternoon, a bare dozen of people; but Mrs. L.
said the congregation was very much larger in the morning. Monday to
Friday we lived “Arabian Nights” in Cairo. If I let my pen run on my
story might be only shorter than the thousand and one of the volume
aforesaid.

On Friday, all being ready, we took to our boats, in which we have now
been domiciled so long, seemingly, that events of October and November
in England are dimly remembered, as if they belonged to another
“dynasty.” There are nine of us, in two boats. The first and larger one,
in which our table is spread, the Ibis, accommodates all the ladies and
myself, the only married man of the company…. The bow is occupied by
the crew, and at the very prow a simple cooking-affair, from which
excellent dinners of four courses, breakfasts, etc., are produced in
some wonderful way by our Arab cook and his assistant. The smaller boat,
the Undine, gives ample quarters to the three single men, also our
dragoman, the younger Sapienza, a Maltese, whose time, however, is
mostly passed on our boat.

An independent party, but arranged to keep in company, consists of Mr.
and Mrs. Howland of New York, very nice people, with their servant and
dragoman, in the Heron. But I must cut short these details, or I shall
never come to an end. On Friday and Saturday the wind was dead ahead,
and, tracking being impossible until we get out of Cairo, we were
stationary, and on Saturday some of us visited the interesting museum at
Boulak, made by Mariette. Sunday, wind still unfavorable, until nearly
sunset, when we got up two or three miles, where we commanded a superb
view. In the morning you preached to the great satisfaction of your
congregation of eleven, a very appreciating audience. We established a
regular liturgical service. I was installed as curate; but Mrs. Gray
read the first of your university sermons…. Monday and Tuesday, and I
think Wednesday also, the boat was tracked, and so we made only a few
miles a day, and some of us were much on shore….

This [the temple of Abydos] was the first Egyptian structure of any
consequence I had ever seen, and it is very impressive. Most of the
roofing remains, and having been exhumed, for the greater part, within a
very few years, the colored sculptures covering the walls are very
perfect and fresh. They are in the best style, of the same age as those
in the great temple at Thebes, which we have yet to see.

Yesterday we sailed along slowly, to-day still more so, luxuriating in
this January weather, which is like our June at home, without any of its
fitfulness. To-day we had full service, and I read your second
university sermon, which all liked very much indeed, and have bespoken
the third for next Sunday. Your audience consists of eight Unitarians
and three Orthodox Presbyterians. By the way I was much gratified with
the appreciative review of your sermons in the “Spectator,” in a number
which I received at Alexandria. Thanks for the other papers you
forwarded also. I think only letters are awaiting us at Thebes (Luxor),
but Mr. Hale may send up papers by private opportunity. The mails taken
by runners carry only letters. Our latest intelligence from the Western
World is barely up to the formation of Gladstone’s ministry. I shall
have a deal to read up. But here our days pass on with scarce a thought
of the modern and western world, except on Christmas and New Year’s
days. I wish I could give you some idea of our life here, and of all we
see and enjoy, but you must imagine it. We are well supplied with books,
especially relative to Egypt, are busy from morn to night in a leisurely
way, and are intensely comfortable….

We had yesterday for Dendera, where the temple, as to structure, is in
most complete preservation, but the architecture is of the rather
debased Ptolemaic period, and the sculptures on the walls, never equal,
I imagine, to those at Abydos, have been sadly defaced by the early
Coptic Christians. But all was very interesting, and the ladies were all
with us to enjoy it.

Evening.–We are lying eight miles below Thebes, which we expect to
reach early to-morrow morning, and to receive and dispatch letters. So I
must close this. We are writing at nine P.M., with almost all the cabin
windows open. The day has been like one of July in England,–in one
respect unusually like, for the sky has been overcast with light clouds,
and the air sultry, ending as such a day might with a sudden and brief
storm–of wind only, though it seemed about to rain; but it is now
still, and the stars are shining out of a clear sky.

TO CHARLES WRIGHT.

NUBIA, BELOW DERR, January 21, 1869.

Let me begin a line to you from this Æthiopian region. The object is to
inclose to you some fresh seeds of Ficus sycomorus, the true sycamore or
fool fig,–not bad to eat. They were gathered at the first cataract of
the Nile, at ancient Syene, or between it and Philæ. I think you may
like to send a part to Don José, for culture in Cuba, where it will be a
good thing to have. And the rest, let Guerrineau try to raise some, that
we may have one in the conservatory. I shall send, along with heavy
things, some nuts of the Doum palm, Hyphæne Thebaica, which branches and
is picturesque. That and the date palm are the principal trees here.
Besides, there is Acacia Nilotica (the sont) and one or two other
acacias, and an occasional sycamore. Below, a jujube tree was not
uncommon, and plenty of the fine Acacia (or Albizzia) Lebbek, with its
great flat pods and large leaflets. But none in Nubia. Up here the
cultivable valley of the Nile is just the slope of the banks bared as
the river subsides after the inundation, making a strip of green crops
from five feet to five rods wide,–all else desert, either rock or sand
as the case may be. We came twenty-four hours ago within the tropics,–a
new thing for me, and I thought of Cuba and you. But it is just
comfortably warm, 70° in the shade as I write,–has been 76°,–the
nights down to 60° or so; just nice and comfortable if you keep out of
the sun, which, though seemingly not hot, has an overpowering effect I
never knew at home. Our winds are steady from north and northwest,
pushing us up the river steadily. About sixty miles more, or may be
seventy, is the second cataract, and our limit. Then we turn our faces
north again, and descend, making our principal stops by the way. For
thus far, we have stopped only little or briefly, taking only such
sight-seeing as came in our way or took us little out of it. Yet we have
had a glance at several of the greatest things. Abou-Simbel–the great
rock temples of this region, and the main thing to go up into Nubia
for–we hope to reach to-morrow or day after. We should have been there
now, but were delayed at Assouan by long negotiations before we could
get put up the Cataracts, and afterwards lost forty-eight hours by
breaking the rudder of our larger boat. No letters till we get back to
Thebes (Luxor)–some weeks hence. There I trust there is something from
you….

TO JOHN TORREY.

January, 1869.

… At Luxor, on our way up, we stopped only half a day, and took our
first view of the great temple at Karnak. Left on the morning of January
8; reached Esneh, the capital of Upper Nubia, in early morning of the
10th. Sunday, passed the day and night there. The Ptolemaic temple, or
rather the first court of it, very perfect and thoroughly cleared out
within, the columns especially beautiful and all perfect. January 12,
having sailed past Silsilis quarries, etc., by night, reached Assouan
before noon. Here we reached the granite rocks and the basalt, and the
next day visited the quarries whence the obelisks and all the great
shafts, blocks, sarcophagi, granite colossi, etc., have been taken
during several thousand years, the last almost two thousand years ago;
and here are the chisel-marks and places cut to receive the wedges as
sharp and fresh as if the workmen had only just left off work. Of course
we viewed the obelisk left in the rough, only partly detached. We were
moored right opposite Elephantiné, and during the two or three days’
delay before we could arrange to be taken up the cataracts, or secure
fitting weather, the excursion up to Philæ was made by most of the
party, on camels or donkeys (I greatly prefer the latter), and the very
picturesque scenery enjoyed.

January 16 and 17 were grand days, going up the cataracts, our boats in
charge of the Nubians. The first day, Saturday, sailed up to the rapids
and were drawn up the first severe one,–a hard pull and barely room to
get our larger boat through; 17th, a quiet Sunday, in still water
between upper and lower rapids; under most picturesque surroundings of
river, rock, and desert, here strangely mingled, and a hot cloudless
sun; had service and much enjoyed Church’s sermon No. 3. Climbing one of
the rugged masses of rock toward sunset, had a fine distant view of
lovely Philæ. Monday, 18th, the army of Nubians again took hold of our
boats, and with noises indescribable and persevering efforts the boats
were drawn, one by one, up the final and worst fall; we were in calm
water before sunset, and at dusk were moored close to Philæ, which we
got charming views of, from the opposite shore next morning at sunrise;
came up and made a brief visit to the ruins after breakfast, and sailed
on with a beautiful breeze, when suddenly, about twenty miles on, the
rudder of the Ibis gave way (injured probably in the cataracts), and for
forty-eight hours we lay by near a Nubian hamlet (climbed the mountains
on Arabian side; got wonderful views of desert, rock on this side,
reddish-yellow sand on the other), while Antonio, the dragoman, with
rowboat went back to Philæ, and thence by land to Assouan, whence on
camel brought up new rudder-post, workmen, etc., reinstated the rudder,
and–January 21, afternoon–we were off again.

Nubia is very different from Egypt, picturesque rocky ranges always near
the river and broken into peaks and pyramids, and all desert except the
narrow selvage reclaimed by irrigation with sakias; here the vegetation
(barley, peas, beans, and lupines) intensely green by the contrast with
yellow sand or light brown sandstone.

January 23, before reaching Korosko (whence caravans to Dongola; visited
their camps, very wild Arabs and blacks, and very disagreeable white
traders, Greeks, probably, with villainous faces) saw our first
crocodile, and sent two shots at once at him, but the huge fellow
flounced off the sand bank into the river, probably not much hurt.

January 24, first met with chameleons; got three or four from the boys,
but finally kept only one, which we still have here at Cairo–a lovely
little brute whose name is Billy, and a great pet; a great diversion to
watch his change of hues, and especially to see him catch flies by
darting out his slender, india-rubber-like tongue to the length of
several inches (nearly that of his whole body when the fly was far
enough off), and with wonderful quickness and certainty. Service in the
afternoon, with Church’s last sermon, and sorry we were to have reached
the end of them.

But I shall never have done with our journey at this rate, and shall
give you not the least idea of it after this fashion; how some days we
sailed on with fair winds, which is very cheerful; some we tracked, and
then we were much on shore and mingled with the people; and often strong
head winds kept us fast at the bank, sometimes for two or three days,
which grew tedious. Well, on the 27th we came to the great attraction of
the upper Nile, Abou-Simbel; but the wind being fine and fair, sailed
on at a great rate, and reached our terminus, Wady Halfeh, next morning.
Made next day excursion to the farthest point, the high rock Abou Seir,
which dominates the second cataracts, and gives extensive view beyond,
far into Africa; head winds next day kept us at the village, which we
explored and exchanged hospitalities with the inhabitants, the poorer
part of which were beginning to suffer from famine. Later, going down,
we met boat loads of corn for seed and food going up from the viceroy
for their relief; little enough to do for a people so cruelly oppressed
and peeled as the fellahs are. At evening we could be off, the great
yard and sail now down, and small mizzen in its place, to use on the
rare occasion of a south wind, and now we depend upon the current and
oars, five on each side, handled by our stalwart crew, their strokes
timed by queer Arabic chants; more severe labor than in ascending
(except when tracking) and not so pleasant to us as sailing; but yet we
could come down much faster than we came up. Whenever there was
sight-seeing by day the crews would usually row all night, so we got on
finely.

MESSINA, March 24.

Behold us so far back towards Europe. Here, kept in by that strange
thing in our experience, a rainy day, and prevented thereby from going
to Taormina (Tauromenium) to see the Greek theatre, the site of Naxos,
and a near view of Etna, I resume my writing; which was interrupted a
week ago by multifarious things at Cairo…. I think I must go back to
the diary, and so try to tell you, in this mechanical sort of way,
somewhat of our occupation day by day. The bare names of the places must
convey to you all I can hope to of our seeings and doings.

February 1.–Reached Abou Simbel at daybreak, and were under the great
giant Rameses when the first rays of the sun touched their huge, placid
faces, and were in the rock temple within when the horizontal rays
entering the small opening for a half hour lighted up the great Osiride
figures to best advantage, and even reached the broken statues at the
bottom of the adytum. Later in the day explored leisurely and repeatedly
the whole interior chambers with candles, and occasionally with Bengal
lights and magnesium wire (the best of all lights), bringing out well
the famous sculptures that cover all the walls. Climbed the heights
later in the day to get superb views of desert and river and the sunset.
Late in evening some went again through the sand to see the great faces
by moonlight, which, however, they supplemented by torches. We were
moored right under the face of the smaller rock temple….

February 9.–Awoke at Philæ; of which I will only say that even Miss
Martineau does not exaggerate the interest of the whole, and the beauty
and picturesqueness of the site.

February 10.–All day at Philæ, and dropped down to Mahatta just as the
sun set gloriously behind the ruins and the mighty rocks which surround
them.

February 11.–The Ibis shot the great cataract, all but one of our party
being on the shore to see the exciting sight,–finer, it is thought,
than being on board, though you thus lose the sense of personal danger.
We were taken on shore round the trying points, and in our rowboats the
rest of the way down to Assouan, where we joined the Ibis, vociferously
welcomed by our combined Egyptian and Nubian crews, all rejoicing, as
they well might, in the safety of the Ibis, which had never done the
feat before and was reckoned rather large for the undertaking. Shopping,
etc., filled the day. At evening some of us called on Lady Duff-Gordon,
living on her boat, now lying here. I went back later and passed an hour
more with her, taking her some books we could spare her. Much pleased
with her spirit and affability, but distressed at the progress disease
is making; do not think she can last much longer, even in Egypt. Her
last year’s visit to Syria injured her seriously.

February 12.–The Undine came down famously at sunrise, and joined us
soon opposite the upper end of Elephantiné, where we went up to meet
her, expecting to round the island and be off at once down the river.
But a heavy blow from the north, and consequent great discouragement; we
had to lay by all day, not even getting on shore with any comfort, and
almost all night.

You must know that in Upper Egypt and Nubia a hakim or doctor is a great
godsend to the people, and you have to give medicine all day long. On
returning to Assouan I was met, when I stepped on shore, by the beaming
dark countenance of a papa, to whose son, whom I thought rather far
gone, I had given some medicine when going up; he had now brought down
the fellow from a village several miles off, to show me how well–or
nearly well–he was. Another widely grinning face met me, of a papa who
had brought me his boy with a dreadfully ill-looking sore head, which I
had dosed with mercurial ointment rubbed in with colza oil. He did not
now bring the lad, but came a good distance to recall him to my
recollection by expressive pantomime, and to say in the same way that
he was “all right.” Eye-wash I dispensed in profuse abundance; and among
the men cured several cases of ophthalmia which looked serious; and many
a petty surgical operation did the “Hakim-Pacha”–as he came to be
called–perform. I cannot tell you how much attached we got to our crews
and their officers, and before we parted I made sure that many tears
should flow in my behalf, by acceding to requests for eye-lotions, which
were most copiously used,–by those who needed it, for cure, by those
who did not, for prevention. Two sorts of creatures with which I
formerly had little sympathy, I have learned to appreciate and
respect,–donkeys and people of color, Arabs and Nubians especially. All
idea of anything disagreeable or inferior in color of skin disappeared,
or rather the darker fellows seemed the finer. As I remember sundry dark
Arabs, they seem to me among the best-looking and best-behaved men I
ever knew. But this digression will never do…. At sunset reached
Edfou.

February 15.–Whole day at the temple, which is all but entire, and
large as well as complete, and the acres of sculpture and hieroglyph in
excellent preservation, all recently excavated under the care of
Mariette and placed under a custodian. If I could be dropped down in
Egypt for one morning only, to see only one thing, it should be this
temple at Edfou, though only of Ptolemaic date. I cannot stop for a
single detail about it….

February 22.–Luxor: across river, tombs, Medinet el Bahree, Ramaseum,
again, etc. I and some others dined in the evening on boat with our
English friends (Legge, Eaton, and Baird), and celebrated Washington’s
Birthday.

February 23.–Boats dropped down to Karnak, had afternoon at the great
temple, tea there at dusk,–a famous tea-party in the great hall of
columns, all the dignitaries at Luxor and Karnak invited; the full
moonlight enjoyed for an hour or two, and then illumination with Bengal
lights, making splendid effects among the 137 columns, and other parts;
then rockets; some of our parties back to boat, the rest to a feast
given by a splendid old Arab, the chief of Karnak, in full Arab style,
with music, dancing-women, and all. Imaun Joseph, who had been our guest
at the temple tea, was his relative’s guest at this banquet. Lady
Duff-Gordon’s account of him had made him known to us most favorably,
and we got most thoroughly attached to the man, especially after having
him to dine with us next day, his smile, voice, and manners of the
sweetest, and his character is every way lovely. He is as dark-skinned
as most American negroes, but with very handsome features. All these
experiences cannot be written, but could be talked over at large. That
evening view of Karnak is the one I want to keep, so I did not go again;
Mrs. G. did once more.

February 24.–Tombs of the kings; a grand but fatiguing day, most of the
time in Belzoni’s, the finest and largest; most of us did two or three
more. I came home over the mountains to get the fine view over the
valley, etc….

March 4.–Siout: ascended the hill for the great view, from mouth of one
of the great old tombs; shopped in the pretty town; accepted the
American consul’s great attentions for the morning only (rich Coptic
Christian family), but tore ourselves away from entreaties to stay for
dinner and fantasia in the evening, in honor of the inauguration of the
American President, so secured the good wind and were off in the
afternoon….

March 9.–Went over the site of Memphis; saw the colossal figure of
Rameses lying pathetically on his face, pyramids of Sakkara, Serapeum,
the wonderful Apis sarcophagi, and finally that newly excavated,
beautiful tomb structure, of date very early in old empire (fourth or
fifth dynasty), with paintings and low reliefs with truthfulness,
spirit, taste, and fineness of execution, much surpassing the best days
of the later empire, and all free of the grotesque mythology of later
times. A fine treat to come at the last.

March 10.–Hard rowing against wind to reach Gizeh; went in carriages,
by road made for the Prince of Wales, to the Great Pyramid and its
fellow. I went in, but no one ascended,–too much wind; Sphinx,
neighboring old tombs, etc., etc.

March 11.–Cairo: packed and left the boats so long our home, and
good-by to the sailors.

March 12-18.–Cairo: must not forget one day passed at Mariette’s
museum, studying specially the fine things of old empire which he has
discovered and rescued. Had fairly enough of mosques, Moslem tombs,
modern palaces, etc. Sorry that slight illness cut off several things,
notably a drive to the site of Heliopolis, marked only by a single
obelisk. Steamer from Alexandria would not wait, so we must needs hurry
off, our pleasant party break up, etc.

March 19.–A morning drive at Alexandria, to see Pompey’s Pillar, the
Obelisk, etc., and so on board the Peluze; a beautiful evening, but
blowy weather followed,–a seasick time; and here we got, not Monday
evening, but Tuesday morning, boat gone to Naples the day before….
Mrs. G. badly knocked up, and here is cold spring weather and fickle,
weeping skies, so unlike the thoroughly reliable weather which we had
got to regard as a law of nature; wherefore such freaks take us all by
surprise. Oh, how we long already for the dry air and certain sky of old
Egypt!…

TAORMINA, March 25, evening.

We have done it, after all, or at least are in the way of doing it….
This morning, when the sea looked rough with the recent gales, although
the very low barometer began to rise, I was not sorry when the Florio
steamer was kept back, waiting an overdue corresponding vessel from
Malta, and, though announced to sail to-morrow, I determined to wait yet
longer for smoother weather. Meanwhile it cleared off beautifully,
though with considerable wind. At four P.M. this afternoon we were off
by rail with small luggage needful, on the Catania railroad; an hour and
a half along a coast more picturesque than the finest parts of the
Corniche road, though not so grand, brought us to Giardini; whence an
ascent of an hour up a zigzag road in a one-horse carriage, commanding
charming sunset views all the way, old Etna full in view southwest,
brought us to this queer perch. It reminds us of Turbia, but is far more
striking. We are in a primitive, but very nice auberge; our window
looking full upon the whole mass of Etna glistening in the clear
moonlight. On the left hand we look directly down upon the sea and along
the jagged coast; on the right Taormina Castle overhangs us almost, the
old castle or forts covering its narrow summit, probably 1,000 feet
above us; it must command an extraordinary view. We shall see to-morrow.
Rather behind us lies the amphitheatre, on a craggy buttress between us
and the sea.

Morning; up at daylight, to the amphitheatre, to see sun rise out of the
sea and light up Etna, which was without a cloud. The theatre really a
Roman ruin, with bits only of the original Greek; the situation
superb…. I climb up to Mola, get a grand study of Etna from height of
1,500-2,000 feet, the clouds keeping off till I had done. Extensive sea
and coast view, but haze in the far distance. Descended on to the peak
bearing the Saracenic ruins of the Castle of Taormina, overhanging the
town; and now, having dined, and found Mrs. G. better, as well as
desirous of warmer quarters, we are soon to descend to the shore below
us, and take train for Catania. This place is very well worth visiting,
and I am glad that I arranged as I did, only sorry that I had to enjoy
most of it alone.

NAPLES, Tuesday, 30th.

Found Catania well worth a visit; had pleasant Easter Sunday, and superb
view of Etna, and of its various former doings, sending its lavas down
to the sea in a tremendous way. Getting back to Messina, the steamer, a
little one, was off Monday afternoon; good parting views of Etna toward
evening; an uncomfortable night; we entered the bay at daybreak, and
Naples soon after sunrise, and are now domiciled in full view of
Vesuvius.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

ROME, April 22, 1869.

… I am thirsty for botanical news, after having laid aside the
botanist for a much longer time than ever before. Well, we were three
and a half months in Egypt, three months of it on the Nile itself, and
we have avoided the chills of winter and had a season of great enjoyment
and interest. I passed your friend Professor Marcet in Nubia, but missed
visiting his boat, from his sailing under the English flag, but hit upon
that of Mr. Naville,[76] whom we saw afterwards at Edfou, and were much
pleased with.

Botany on the Nile is nearly _nil_, yet I collected a small suite of
specimens, as souvenirs. Returning, we had a most uncomfortable passage
to Messina…. In Naples and in the charming environs we passed a
fortnight and rather more, and have now had a week in Rome.

We are just now recovering the mild and charming weather which we left
behind in Egypt. We shall stay here, I suppose, only ten days more, make
a short stay in Florence, also in Venice, visit the Italian lakes, and,
I think, go to Vienna by way of Innsbruck, to be there the first week in
June. All else is uncertain, except that we mean to be in Switzerland in
July….

* * * * *

Dr. Gray said he found more botany in a half day in the desert than in a
week in Egypt! A country cultivated for five thousand years had no
weeds. There were long walks and occasional excursions in Nubia into the
desert when the dahabeah was lying still.

TO CHARLES WRIGHT.

MUNICH, June 8, 1869.

… It is hurrying and distracting work, this traveling with a pair of
nice young ladies, sharp for sight-seeing, … and a lot of botanists
and gardens, etc., you want to see on your own hook. So you will excuse
all curtness in letters….

At Munich we saw, of course, much of Madame de Martius,[77]–a sweet,
good soul, deeply grieved by the loss of her husband, and yet bears up
bravely. And we learned many interesting things about good Martius.
Notices of Martius’ death were sent, as usual, to all friends….

11th. Nuremberg is a queer old place indeed. We have nearly twenty-four
hours here, and go on the way to Dresden to-day.

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

DRESDEN, June 13, 1869.

I’ll tell you what our plans are at present. To stay here till Friday
noon, the 18th; Mrs. G. to be very quiet, as she cares mainly to see the
gallery and enjoy it leisurely. On Tuesday, I, with the young ladies, go
up to Freiberg to visit the celebrated mining school, etc., and on
return next day, to see the Forst-Akademie at Tharand. Friday night all
to Töplitz, to pass two days with a friend,–the Sunday’s rest. Monday
to Prague, Tuesday to Regensburg, Wednesday or Thursday to Munich, and
Saturday evening to be at Ragatz (or Pfeffers). Soon after at least Mrs.
G. and I will be settled for a while at Geneva.

HÔTEL BYRON, VILLENEUVE, July 15, 1869.

… Boissier has been seriously sick with a pleurisy, etc.; is at Orbe,
or was. If still there I should go to see him; but he has now gone to
Gries, in Appenzell, to a bathing-place, and I shall not see him….
Reuter, his curator, was away last week, but I shall see him, I presume,
to-morrow.

I have just lost my mother, at a good old age. My father died
twenty-four years earlier….

It is a charming place here. We are spending the morning lazily, and go
on soon to Geneva. The young people have gone on to Chamouni, which we
do not care to revisit…. Kindest regards to Professor Fenzl, with
regrets that I shall not see him.

TO JOSEPH HOWLAND.

INTERLAKEN, July 26, 1869.

… We have had a joyful time in Switzerland, and for me a complete
rejuvenation. And as to Mrs. Gray, who did not need that, what we call
“the movement cure” has done her more good than all Egypt. That my
lamentable failure of breath on Piz Langarde was owing, not to advancing
years, as I had foreboded, nor wholly to the rarefaction of the
atmosphere above 9,000 feet, as Mrs. H. suggested, but to a violent
cold, then impending, I proved satisfactorily by walking the other day
down from Mürren to Lauterbrunnen (having walked up the eve before), and
then right on over the Wengern Alp to Grindelwald, and I believe as
comfortably as I did it (all but the first part) thirty, and then
nineteen, years ago!

Weather has been all we could ask for,–this the first rainy day to keep
us indoors, and it now promises to be pleasant by noon, so that we can
go to Giessbach. Let me tell you what we have done….

Wife and I started Thursday, to Sierre, by rail. Friday, carriage to
Visp, and horses to St. Nicolaus. Saturday, char-à-banc to Zermatt, and
horses to hotel on the Riffel. Only my wife’s own pen can relate how
she felt in flesh, bones, and spirit after that, nor her surprise to
find next morning that she was “alive, and alive like to be,” nor her
keen delight in Matterhorn, Monte Rosa, and surroundings, and the
profusion of alpine flowers. Sunday and Monday on Riffel most enjoyable.
Tuesday, Mrs. G., thinking _facile descensus_ inapplicable to such a
steep path, insisted upon walking down to Zermatt, which she did; a long
rest at Zermatt, with pleasant English friends, and a dinner enabled us
to go in char to St. Nicolaus to sleep, taking a small thunder-shower in
the way.

Wednesday, “we still live,” and go on horses, through two showers, to
Visp again, and then carriage to Sierre and rail down to Hôtel Byron, to
get charming view and sleep.

Thursday, all fresh comparatively, and go in a chaise to Chillon, and
then back to our pleasant quarters in Hôtel de la Metropole, Geneva.
Here we rest, see friends, and do botany till Tuesday last.

TO R. W. CHURCH.

LONDON, August 22, 1869.

… With all my endeavors I could not get off a note to you by
yesterday’s (Saturday’s) post, and so shall be late in announcing to you
our prosperous return to England. We left Paris on Thursday, reached
Amiens in time to visit the cathedral, a most striking specimen of
fullest-flowered Gothic, saw it again on Friday morning, and, after a
smooth crossing, got to London before sunset. Yesterday I had to go to
the banker’s, to Kew, and to see our Harvard men at Putney.[78] I must
now needs be with them on their trial day; and then, tell me frankly if
it would perfectly suit Mrs. Church and yourself if we came to you on
Saturday (28th) for a few days. Later would serve us, if you prefer….

After that I hope we can get settled at Kew, and do some work, for which
I have little enough time left.

As to Exeter meeting of British Association, I am on the whole glad
enough to keep away, especially from Darwinian discussions, in which I
desire not to be at all “mixed up” with the prevailing and peculiarly
English materialistic, positivic line of thought, with which I have no
sympathy, while in natural history I am a sort of Darwinian.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

KEW, [CHARLTON HOUSE], September 20, 1869.

The skies were propitious to us in Switzerland, and the only very warm
day was the one which we passed, very pleasantly indeed, with Godet at
Neufchâtel. Thence we went to Paris, stopping at Dijon en route….

Oliver and Baker are here steadily at work. Dr. Masters[79] drops in now
and then. Dr. Hooker, after some respite, was at home. Dr. Thomson
returned last week; and now Bentham is here also, fresh from the
Continent.

At British Museum I find Dr. Carruthers[80] and the new assistant, Dr.
Trimen. Mr. Bennett still, I think, away on his holiday. Botanical and
other news I have none. I send you this mere apology for a letter, in
the hope of getting something from you; and later I may have more to
say. Can I be of any use to you here?

Remember me kindly to Dr. Müller,[81] to whom best thanks for all the
friendly services which he has rendered me.

Our united kind regards to Madame De Candolle, and to your son (from
whom I still expect a photograph), and my wife’s to yourself. We have
the most pleasant recollections of our brief visit to Geneva.

Believe me ever your devoted

ASA GRAY.

TO GENERAL HOWLAND.

KEW, October 3, 1869.

I don’t know when you would get a response to your welcome letter of
August 22, which reached us here in due course, so long as things went
on in the ordinary way,–I working at botany as much as possible, but
presiding here over a considerable household, some sight-seeing and much
intermittent visiting. But now that I am all alone, and my wife with the
rest of them _girareing_ over the north of England, sober reflection has
its hour, and I remember the friends that are far away, perhaps on the
shores of Italian lakes, and long to know how they get on and what they
are about. To attain which knowledge and put myself _en rapport_ I
should first, I know, give you some account of ourselves and our doings.

But where to begin? I think we wrote you from Paris. We had three weeks
there, I mostly at the Jardin des Plantes till near dinner-time….

For ourselves, after cool weather in Paris we came in for a piece of
very sultry weather in London, where we had to stay awhile, our lodgings
here not being available till about 15th September. So after staying to
the Harvard boat-race,–which I saw from the umpire’s boat, and Mrs.
Gray, with good Miss S., from some grounds above Fulham,–we set off on
a little round of visits, first to the Darwins’, near Bromley, then to
the Churches’ in Somersetshire, a pleasant country rectory and a
delightful couple. You remember the university sermons we had up the
Nile were his. Next we passed a day with an old bachelor botanical
acquaintance near Taunton, who makes a capital squire; then to Torquay
for three days (with a daughter of Sir William Hooker, and her husband,
Dr. Lombe), one of which I devoted to an excursion down the river Dart
from Totness to Dartmouth (which the English think much of, but you
dwellers on the Hudson would not), and to a view of that quaint little
town. On our way back we had an hour at Exeter to see the cathedral; a
night and morning at Salisbury, the cathedral as to exterior, site, and
all, and beautiful spire, one of the most satisfactory in England; took
a glance at Wilton, a peep into old George Herbert’s little church of
Bemerton and into his house and garden; stopped over a train at Romsey
to see the fine Norman abbey church, and to Winchester, most interesting
cathedral as to the interior, Winchester school and the old Hospital of
St. Cross. Then, on returning to London, we settled down here, and after
a few days were joined by the rest of our party from France.

… No one in England recognized me with my venerable white beard!

Ever, dear Howland, your affectionate
ASA GRAY.

The winter Dr. Gray spent in Egypt, in 1869, he raised a full beard,
which so changed his appearance that, though eyes and voice were there,
his oldest friends did not know him on his return, and he had great glee
in imposing himself on his old friend Dr. Torrey, when he went to the
station to meet him in Boston, as a persistent hack-driver. Even when he
declared himself, Dr. Torrey would scarcely believe him; he and
Professor Henry always maintained a man had no lawful right so to change
his outward appearance after middle age.

TO R. W. CHURCH.

KEW, October 6, 1869.

… A week ago Saturday Mrs. G. and I went down via Warwick to
Stratford-on-Avon, where we had never been, with Professor Flower,[82]
to visit his father and mother, whose house (almost always thronged by
Americans), a short mile out of Stratford, commands one of the most
charming and wholly English views (that of English landscape-painters).
On Monday morning Loring and the girls, who had passed the Sunday at
Warwick, drove down and took us up, and we saw the Shakespeare
memorials, even to Anne Hathaway’s cottage (all but myself, who studied
brewing instead), and back to “The Hill” for a lunch-dinner. Then they
took my wife and departed to pass night and next day at Warwick. At
evening I went by a direct train to Oxford to sleep, seeing first
Professor Rolleston[83] for a moment. And, breakfasting with him and
his agreeable wife next morning early (his windows command a lovely
view), set about seeing all the structures, etc., that have sprung up
since the almost twenty years that have passed: the Museum and its
workings, the Ratcliffe turned into an admirable reading-room, chapel of
Exeter, also Balliol, new buildings of Christ Church, etc. I did not
fail to look in upon the quadrangle of Oriel, also, to ask for Mr.
Burgon, but he was in France. After lunch I took train, and was in Kew
soon after sunset. Since then I have been away one day and one night,
with Mr. Rivers of Orchard-house fame, at Sawbridgeworth, Herts….

TO JOHN TORREY.

KEW, October 11, 1869.

I am now almost through with my examination of the Polemoniaceæ, for
which I brought over all mine here. I have got them into good shape,
settled many things only to be determined here, and have a clear and
definite idea as to what I would do with the genera, and have
straightened out the species.

October 31.

After so long a drought–as happens in some climates–when the change
comes, you pour refreshingly. But with all your three rapidly following
letters not one of them makes the least reference to my letter, written
for one special purpose.

Bennett is as pleasant as ever. When I go up next to British Museum I
will give your regards.

Old Gray (J. E.), who has ever been particularly kind to us, has had a
paralytic stroke, which, with other infirmities, seemed about to close
his life. But he is wonderfully rallying….

How glad we are about the grandchild, and what real comfort and delight
you will have with the little fellow! And then the satisfaction of
having your name go down in the direct line. Why, he may be a botanist,
or at least a chemist, and add honor to the name in another generation.
Please give, with our love, our united congratulations to the happy papa
and mamma.

We have been corresponding with Carey, and shall see him soon.

The sheet is full; so adieu for a few weeks. Ever your affectionate

A. GRAY.

TO R. W. CHURCH.

QUEEN’S HOTEL, LIVERPOOL, November 8, 1869.

We broke up our establishment at Kew, this afternoon, and are having the
night here, preparatory to embarkation. Before leaving Kew I received
the proof of your sermon,[84] and here I found your last note, and
Loring another proof-copy of the sermon; for which he sends best thanks.

So you have been again to Windsor, and this time, I trust, had her
Majesty in the congregation….

Loring, the young ladies, and myself had the Sunday at Canterbury, our
last cathedral, and a most interesting one, both in the sight and the
associations. We have Stanley’s “Memorials” to read up, with other
things, on the voyage, if the Atlantic will allow it.

Wednesday morning.–Off Irish coast; shall reach Queenstown before
noon; very smooth water, especially since we were out of the St.
George’s Channel. We are all doing very well, though some of our party,
including Mrs. Gray, are poor creatures on the water.

I have read over the sermon with real interest. What I much like in it
is the broadness of view and moderation of claim, which adds strength to
the argument. It seems to me that every Christian man, churchman or no,
would yield full assent to all you say.

And, dear Mr. Church, consider that all your friends think, no doubt, as
I do, that you are hardly at liberty to take counsel of your misgivings
and humility, if asked to take some position in which your gifts may
tell more directly upon educated men, especially the younger men. I
don’t want to see you in a position which brings cares and anxieties
along with high honors; these I do not covet for you in the least. What
I covet for you is fruitful leisure, some position for you which, while
it gives you time, and income enough to supply real wants, makes also
some demands; for rarely does one do anything to much purpose that he is
not somehow constrained to do.

We leave behind us in England most delightful friends, and we are not
likely to forget them; but we are somehow drawn to you in a peculiar
way, and shall often be thinking of you and yours when settled down
again, if it please God that we may be, at our pleasant home on the
other side of the Atlantic.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS., November 23, 1869.

Just a line to tell you–which you will be glad to know–that we safely
accomplished our voyage home, landing yesterday morning [Monday] early,
on the thirteenth day. Very well for that vessel, the slowest of the
line, and at this season, with much head wind. No gales, but some stiff
breezes, and the vessel tumbled and rolled about, to our discomfort.
However, it is all over; and Mrs. G. and the other ladies, who suffered
a good deal, are looking brighter again.

My wife sends kind love to you and all yours, and the young people, if
they knew of my writing, would send kind and grateful messages. The
voyage now seems to me only as a disturbed night’s sleep, dozing off in
Old England to awake in the New.

Ever yours affectionately,
A. GRAY.

TO CHARLES DARWIN.

CAMBRIDGE, February 14, 1870.

MY DEAR DARWIN,–Being eve of post-day we respond at once to yours of
the 27th January–which arrived this very morning–lest you should send
us down to posterity with a fabulous dog-story.

I well remember telling you of our “Max”[85] and his habit of washing
cat-fashion; which you suggested might have come from being brought up
with a cat, and I think I told you that I had not been able to learn
definitely whether that was the case or no. Here, you see, by some
shuffling of memory, a suggestion of what might explain a fact has taken
the place of the fact itself. I am curious to know if it be true, for it
is the only explanation I can think of.

I trust you have some of the slender-leaved Drosera I sent through
Hooker.

Well, our homeward voyage was not a nice one, especially for Mrs. Gray,
and it now seems a long time ago. I dropped at once into a world of
work; but am not killing myself. The main struggle for existence will
come in the spring, when my duties crowd on me dreadfully.

It gave us both very great pleasure to see again Mrs. Darwin’s
well-known handwriting, and your signature.

I knew you would be pleased with young Agassiz and his Yankee wife. I
wish his health were better; and I do hope your own will be such that
you can next summer see and know my trump of a colleague J. Wyman.

TO GEORGE BENTHAM.

CAMBRIDGE, March 28, 1870.

… You hope that I will not resign my chair here unless to devote
myself wholly to botanical work. What other object could I have in view?
I am not likely to be idle, and I care for nothing else. The difficulty
is, that the university cannot well spare me now, nor find a fit person
to take either the whole or a part of my work, but there is a good
disposition to favor my views.

Charles Wright is helping me as curator of the herbarium, and is getting
the large accessions into it–rather slowly.

The winter is nearly passed; I have employed diligently all the time I
could command, but the net result looks small. All I have for the
printer is a revision of Eriogoneæ, which I have turned over to him, and
which you shall soon see. I think I have done it very well. I have in
Eriogonum made use of a character which you have not employed, i. e.,
the attenuation of the base of the flower into stipes, which marks the
umbellata and the eriantha well, and I have increased the number of the
sections. The species I have actually diminished from eighty-one to
seventy-nine, although several had been added to those in the
Prodromuses, and I have added half a dozen myself.

I should have written to you long ago, but as you would always have news
of me through Hooker, and I had nothing special to say, I refrained. It
is always a pleasure to hear from you, and I have no idea that our long
correspondence should drop. I should have seen more of you and Mrs.
Bentham (and my wife, too, regretted much), but you were much laid up
with that sciatica, and we were dreadfully pressed at the last. Could we
have had this winter in England, as we had at first hoped, it would have
been well.

Torrey made me a visit in January; is well and happy, except that he
gets only odds and ends of time for botany, and so cannot do anything to
much purpose. The Eriogoneæ being a pet group of his, and his old
sketches very useful in my elaboration, I have joined his name to my own
in the paper I am now printing.

At the wonderful rate you are going on you will soon complete the “Flora
Australiensis.” Happy and fortunate man that you are, both in the
faculty of accomplishing work and in having your whole time for just
what you want to do.

TO R. W. CHURCH.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U. S., February 15, 1870.

MY DEAR CHURCH,–My good wife has just handed me these sheets for Mrs.
Church, and if it were not just on post-morning I should gossip with
you, I suppose, to the extent of a sheetful, and send you our hearty
thanks for your most kind and welcome Christmas letter,–the
acknowledgments for which have been deferred too long already.

For myself, I have had three or four delightful weeks out of our short
winter vacation, which have been given wholly to botanical work in my
study. But this week begins again my round of official duties, to
continue till July.

I rather weary of it as I grow older; and still more I grudge the time.
I could now, I see, make fair arrangement for relinquishing a large part
of my work in the university if there were some one ready to come in as
a colleague or suffragan. But the person wanted is not to be found, and
it will take a long while to hatch and raise one. We shall see.

I keep up all my lively interest in English affairs. But I do not get
the items of news now as early as I used to do when the “Gardener’s
Chronicle” had a news-sheet attached. I do well enough in the scientific
line, however, as I see both “Nature” and the “Academy.” The former
should bear for its motto “Natura non facit saltum;” it does not jump at
once to perfection; the articles are many of them rather weak and washy.
The “Academy” in its way seems better. The “Athenæum” (which I hope will
revive, now that Dixon is out of it), the “Saturday Review,” and the
“Pall Mall Budget” come to us in our book club, after a while, in our
turn.

So Temple, having carried his point, is now making his over-active
opponents look a bit foolish by preaching earnest orthodox sermons. And
Gladstone has done a (to me not unexpected) thing which gratifies his
friends here, in giving to Mr. Fraser the see of Manchester; I had not
heard of the death of the former incumbent when the news of this offer
came. What a run Gladstone is having in the way of church patronage!
Then the memorial from both universities themselves for the abolition of
religious tests! How you are getting on! And how are you to manage to
secure proper religious influence at the universities? By moral power
and the strength of your cause alone? which may, after all, be more
truly effective than statutes. Yet there will be natural anxieties.

Pray give me, now and then, an inside view of what is going on, or
better, what is thought.

Why, here is my sheet filled and nothing said. I have nothing to tell
you from here–nothing worth sending you. I don’t think much of Lowell’s
“Cathedral.” The grotesque bits are not in half as good keeping as the
gargoyles and other queer pieces of ornament on the old cathedrals.

CAMBRIDGE, April 4, 1870.

I have for a long while been wishing and endeavoring to write to you,
but it is not so easy, so many other letters have to be written, to
answer letters from persons that I don’t particularly care for, as to
leave little time for those that I do.

I owe you for two very interesting letters; for it was a hurried note of
mine that we need not count, which crossed yours of February 4, and then
there is your later one of March 1, along with Mrs. Church’s to my wife.
I leave it for her to tell you about the novelists. And I have not much
to say of myself. I have pottered all winter over the herbarium and upon
an article for our “American Academy’s Proceedings,” of a wholly
technical nature, which is just in the printer’s hands. I am about to
begin another,–a study of another group of North American plants; but
the professional work absorbs so much of my time and energy that it
will, I know, make no great progress until July brings a long vacation.
And then I may have my hands full, somewhat as yours will be,
superintending building. I have _my_ church to enlarge. I need a
lecture-room here on the spot, and a students’ laboratory in connection
with it; and I have a plan for this, to form a wing to the herbarium
building, and a fair prospect that I may get it done. We shall see
before long; and if the means are forthcoming, I will soon let you know,
with all the details….

The last “Spectator” received gives an abstract of Gladstone’s and
Forster’s Irish Land and Education bills, and of the general favor they
were received with upon their introduction. To have almost satisfied all
parties and interests is really a wonderful and a most unexpected
achievement. You ought to be proud of Gladstone, and well satisfied at
having inevitable and great changes wrought out under so strong a
ministry, and so high-minded a leader. Courage, earnestness, and high
principle here are seen to command success, in Parliament at least. How
anything will work in Ireland remains to be seen. But don’t think as
some of my English friends do, that the Irish are incapable of good
things. The race over here, as a general thing, develop at once what
they seem to lack at home, thrift, and with thrift come order and
respect for law.

I happened to be in Boston on St. Patrick’s Day, and was stopped in my
carriage while a very long Irish procession passed. They were mainly of
the more well-to-do sort, no doubt; but they had made themselves so.
Probably nearly every one of middle age was born in Ireland, and would
have been a peasant laborer at home, very likely ill-conditioned enough.
They were, however, in holiday attire; still they were fair
representatives of the race, and I wished we could send them over to you
for a day, as specimens of what may be made out of such material, under
circumstances, not altogether the best, but much better than those at
home. They are not the best element of our population, certainly, but
they make by no means a bad lower stratum, out of which many show a
truly Yankee-like aptitude for rising. They are almost all Romanists, to
be sure; and there is an element of danger. But the influence of the
priesthood is much tempered (as witness how they ran into Fenianism,
against their exhortations) and in most respects is far from bad. The
Germans are counted as a much better population, but they are quite as
clannish, and in the towns are rather disposed to be actively
anti-Christian.

By the way, I met some time ago Mr. Stanley, who has been in the country
before; is now on his way round the world via California, a favorite
route. He is, or was, an M. P., a son of Lord Stanley of Alderley, an
Oxford man, bright, sharp, and very talkative. He is a specimen of
ultra-secularistic liberalism, I should think, of a set that will be apt
to give you some trouble hereafter, in the questions that are to come
up; if I do not misjudge him, one who thinks the world, or at least
England, has not much farther use for distinctive Christianity; just one
of the sort you must have had in view, in yours of February 4, as
extremely generous “in making free with what other people value, and you
don’t care for.” Most uncivilly, I fear, I fell almost into a wrangle
with him directly. He even seemed to think us on the whole a bigoted set
here in Cambridge,–rather a novel view to us….

Well, I must break off.

Our spring is tardy, after a wintry March. Only snowdrops yet out in the
Garden, and those in the sunniest place, a lot which I brought with me
from England. For primroses we have to look into a cold frame, in which
they, with violets, have been blossoming all the latter part of the
winter.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

November 15, 1870.

MY DEAR DE CANDOLLE,–Many thanks for your most kind letter of the 24th
October. Taken along with one from Mr. Bentham of about the same date,
it gives me tidings of several of our French confrères, who are now in
such great tribulation. What a change since last year, since last summer
even; and for Mrs. Gray and me, how fortunate that we had our visit made
and over before the deluge! And what can be the end, and when? It is
useless to conjecture. And now there is fear that while Germany is
holding the Gallic wolf by the ears,–a situation growing daily more
uncomfortable and dangerous for Prussia, and England is left quite
alone,–Russia is to take a step forward in the Black Sea, etc., which
will greatly vex England and Austria, and perhaps send the torch of war
all over Europe; and if all closes up soon Europe will feel this
powerful Germany. But it may be the better for Switzerland, whose danger
is always from France. It used to make me uneasy and indignant to see
the French flag on the shore of your Lake, where it has no business to
be!

The Caruel[86] pamphlet reached me to-day. To the first question the
answer is simple and easy. About the second, there is perhaps more to be
said. As the publication of a name without a character goes for nothing,
why should the dubious proposal of a name with a hypothetical character
go for more? And suppose the suggested character does not prove true,
and a genus afterwards be founded well upon the same species with a good
character, and under another name, must that give place to the
conditional name, etc.? Vain the endeavor to settle every such little
question by the terms of any positive enactment.

One thing I see, that is, that our solitary point of disagreement will
erelong disappear. The fact of the publication of a certain name, at a
certain date and a certain place, being the main thing, the form (and I
add the agent) of publication being a subsidiary consideration, I think
you will come to agree that, _e. g._, names proposed by Fischer and
published in his name by De Candolle, must be said to be Fischer’s, and
cited, in the last resort, as, _e. g._, “A. dasyglottis, Fisch. in DC.,”
just as I write “Phlox rigida, Benth. in DC.” For all the rest, I think
I agree with you fully. I perfectly agree that, _e. g._, “Diceratium
Lag.” is correct only as a generic name, that “Sect. Diceratium DC.” is
the only correct way. I myself and others have not followed this proper
course always in former times; but should do so hereafter….

Believe me to remain as ever, most cordially yours,

ASA GRAY.

TO R. W. CHURCH.

CAMBRIDGE, October 14, 1870.

MY DEAR FRIEND: … I have the hour of leisure and am in the mood for
writing this evening. The latter I may count on, but the former I
cannot, in these busy and rather distracting days.

On Tuesday evening last I heard Tom Hughes give a public lecture, the
only one he gives in America. He manfully stood up and turned the tables
upon us, by insisting that the Americans were wronging the British, by
blaming them when they ought to be praised for their general conduct
during the war of the Rebellion. His lecture was very able and pleasant;
and he seemed well pleased, as well he might be, at the reception of it.
He, at least, did excellent service in our behalf, in our times of
trial.

The next evening I met him at the house of a colleague here in
Cambridge, and had a very pleasant talk with him. On telling him that I
came near to hearing him speak to the electors of Frome, and was
prevented only by the rainy day that made our walk to Longleat too late,
he spoke of you with much interest, and told me, what I did not know,
that he was of Oriel while you were tutor. He is very much pleased with
his trip through the country.

As to the Franco-German war, it is thus far a succession of wonders, and
now when a week passes, like the last, without any astounding event, one
feels dissatisfied. At first, the crowning and unexpected result, of
judgment overtaking Louis Napoleon here on the spot, was only to be
rejoiced over. And I think you in England must all be glad to see the
vulgar Empire vanish in a day, and in the collapse show how hollow and
good for nothing it was in what we supposed its strong side, military
force and military ability. But now, it is painful to see France reduced
to such straits, and I long to see peace made with as little weakening
of France as may be. Only, if it goes on, this chastening, and the
effort it may induce France to make, may regenerate her spirit. But, as
you say, only the prophetic books of Scripture furnish language in which
to express one’s feelings and sentiments.

“And then this nation will I judge, saith the Lord”–sounds in your
ears, as these vast changes sweep on.

If I fail to enter wholly into your feelings as to Bismarck and Prussia,
here is Mrs. Gray, who has been anti-Prussian from the very first, and
who shares all your misgivings, and more. Now, I think it a pity, and a
loss to the world, that the German people should be broken up into
jealous rival kingdoms and little principalities, always liable to be
played off against each other by outlying nations. I think Germany as
such ought to take its place as a great Central European power. And yet
a simple centralized government is dangerous; at best could ill replace
local governments. So I hope for, and expect, a close confederation of
German states, in a restored and efficient German empire, the states of
which will be as closely united as those of our Federal Union, but yet
sovereignties in all that relates to internal concerns. I don’t despair
of the Germans working out a fairly successful constitutional
parliamentary system, along with state parliaments, etc., after their
own fashion. And I fancy that a united Germany will tend to peace in
Europe, when one section can no more be played off against another.

But what sort of a policy is this which Great Britain seems to have been
pursuing in weakening, and as if inclined to sever, her connections with
her principal colonies? Why not contrive some mode of uniting home and
colonial interests, giving the colonies imperial representation, or
something of the sort, or somehow be making sure that the men you will
be wanting one of these years shall be sturdily growing up on these
virgin soils, where crowding is out of the question, and who may feel as
they grow up that they are part and parcel of a strong empire. For
myself, I can’t abide the idea of the English nation ever coming to play
any secondary part.

As for ourselves, I feel more and more what a good thing it is, and what
an economy in the long run, to have no neighbors, but the whole breadth
of country to ourselves, and to be so far away from Europe that we may
look with unconcern upon the rise or fall of states there, so far as
they affect any interests of ours. That does not prevent our being all
alive to events in Europe, however. The telegraph feeds our lively
curiosity, day by day; but what I write about to-day will have ceased to
interest by the time it reaches you: perhaps the strife all over there;
devoutly do I wish it may be.

I see you have taken up “Anselm” again; and that, I presume, is the book
you are going to send me, and which I shall be pleased to see.

Yes, you must come over here; but when you do, please arrange for time
enough. When you cross the ocean, be sure to stay long enough to get
your money’s worth. If it be the summer after next, perhaps we may cross
the continent together, and see the parent of your Wellingtonia tree on
the lawn, and the rest of the grove, and visit the wondrous Yosemite
Valley, as yet an arduous journey from San Francisco, but it will soon
be within easy reach.

I see that my writing is very bad, and will stop short.

Inclosed are seeds of the two passion-flowers which are so good for
showing the movements of tendril, both the coiling after being touched,
and revolution, etc. Sow in April in your little conservatory, or in
hotbed, and you may have good plants for your purpose in June. The
tendrils show off best under a temperature of 80° or 90° Fahr. P.
acerifolia will give you tendrils a foot long, when in full growth.

I note the uneasiness in England, and the rumors of difference in the
cabinet,–dangerous times for Gladstone’s ministry, but I do hope it
will last.

I suppose your church is all in order, and your cares over as to the
rebuilding….

TO JOHN TORREY.

November 4, 1870.

I have to-day a long letter from Bentham, which I would send to you, but
that it is full of Compositæ queries and statements, which I have soon
to attend to. What a worker he is, and what a good one!

At last accounts Decaisne and Brongniart were drilling. Rather old
sojers, I think! Cosson[87] had dispatched his wife and daughter and
granddaughter to England, and was communicating now and then by
balloon-post! Bentham very well, and working hard at Compositæ for
“Genera.” …

I have an advanced class this year, and they come up here, and take up
a vast deal of my time. But it is enjoyable work, as they are the pick
of a dozen out of fifty or sixty of the preceding year.

March 28, 1871.

… I hope, with you, that the Domingo annexation will break down. But
Grant is working for Cuba too, and that is worse than the other;
ignorant blacks are better than Creole Spaniards to deal with.

TO R. W. CHURCH.

February 27, 1871.

… There are so many things I wanted to write about your church (for
which it was shabby of me not to remember and send you a contribution,
in a small way) and the reopening services of which you sent us a
newspaper account; your “Anselm,” which we read aloud in our deliberate
way, on successive Sunday evenings, when not interrupted, and very much
enjoyed; I think the later chapters most; perhaps because we got more
interested as we went on, perhaps, too, the narrative flows on with a
more free movement in the later than in the earlier chapters. Then there
is this wonderful German-French war, which is only now closing, if it be
the close, in such bitter humiliation of the French as no Frenchman
could ever imagine possible, nor any but a German contemplate without
deep sorrow and pity: all their hard measures of former generations
meted out to them again, to this one hapless generation, in a way that
till now it could never have dreamed of. For long years France must play
a secondary political part, which of itself will be a bitter thing, we
may hope a wholesome thing; and when with long care and nursing of
resources she recovers, she cannot be so strong relatively again, while
the German empire holds together. And I suppose you in England have a
good deal of misgiving as to what this Germanic power portends. Perhaps
the next great wonder, and surely the best thing, may be a great
defensive alliance of English-speaking people round the world, which
would render any European continental changes less momentous.

It seems to me that the hopeful prospect for France is in the
ascendency, seemingly assured, of the conservative republicans and the
Orleanists. But there are rumors that even the Orleans family are
falling out among themselves.

As I grow older I can sympathize thoroughly with a disinclination you
may feel as to assuming any new public duties. The deep ruts which the
daily routine of life has worn for us do become such pleasant paths, as
one ages, that we do not thank anybody for trying to force us out of
them.

Nothing have we heard or seen of Mr. Horner yet: he has gone South
probably, which is wise. I hope he will come this way in June, when we
shall be very glad to see him….

By the way, I see in “Popular Science Review” a neat presentation of
Wallace’s points on the limitations of natural selection as applied to
man, by Buckle (I suppose your Oriel friend), who makes the point very
well that these limitations apply hardly less, in their way, to other
parts of the animal kingdom.

I am too much occupied with humdrum botanical work to read or think much
of such matters.

Have you read or seen Bryant’s translation of the Iliad? It was
discussed in our club last week by my neighbor, who read extracts from
this, Lord Derby’s, and other translations: it was thought to be as
readable as Lord Derby’s, to adhere quite as closely to the original,
and to reflect more truly the simple directness of Homer, both of
expression and thought. I should like to know what you think of it.

The most important matter, as concerns myself, is, that I am busy with
plans of building, having found a man who is disposed to give the money
for constructing here, adjacent to the herbarium, a much needed
botanical lecture-room and laboratory for students. Between the
herbarium (which, you know, adjoins our house, and communicates with it)
and the conservatory, there is a space of 127 feet. This we mean to fill
up: First, with a one-story brick building 60 × 38 feet, rather less
than one half for botanical laboratory and cabinet, the rest
lecture-room; then a lobby, and the remainder of the distance a low
stove and a short, cool greenhouse, to establish connection with our
present hothouse. Then, on the one hand, I can bring plants at all
seasons into the lecture-room; and on the other I can reach the same
under cover, from my private study, through the herbarium; and Mrs. Gray
may walk, in winter, from her dining-room, through our little
drawing-room, entry, library or parlor, my study, greenhouse corridor,
herbarium, lobby, laboratory, lecture-room, passage, stove and
coolhouse, into conservatory, of three compartments, a long affair, but
don’t imagine anything at all grand. A snake, of which our house is the
head and the farthest wing of the conservatory the tail, will give the
best idea. In a lucky time I asked a man to build in this 127 feet, at
an expense of at least twelve

thousand dollars; and I am authorized to get plans and estimates
complete, and I suppose it will be done, though I have no positive
assurance of it yet. I thought you would like to know it, without
waiting till all is absolutely settled.

Here is a second sheet filled: thick paper, too, and I must cut all
short. How I wish we could be with you in Switzerland next summer!

Ever yours affectionately,
ASA GRAY.

TO CHARLES DARWIN.

March 10, 1871.

MY DEAR DARWIN,–It is very good of you to send me, and so kindly
address, a copy of your new book,[88] which safely reached me two days
ago. I have not yet had time to read any of it, except the preface and
the ending; and I do not like to dip into it and so blunt the edge of
curiosity. So I keep it well out of sight, not caring to look just yet
at any of the pages which you think likely to “aggravate” me, until some
day I can get a good pull at it….

April 14, 1871.

You have such a way of putting things, and you write in such a
captivating way. One can only say:–

Almost thou persuadest me to have been “a hairy quadruped, of arboreal
habits, furnished with a tail and pointed ears,” etc.

But I have read only the first part of the book and the closing
chapters; have left all the Sexual Selection till I can read it
leisurely next summer, and have lent it to a judicious friend, who has
just returned it.

I have been besought to write notices of the book, but I decline. You
don’t know how distracted I am in these days,–doing the work of
professor, gardener, builder, financier, and what not, all at once.

But I must not let this mail pass without sending you the little I could
get as to Laura Bridgman.

Through Dr. Jarvis, a medical man, etc., I got the queries put to the
woman who has now the personal charge of Laura, and he brought me the
inclosed, which I think I should not much rely on.

When Dr. Howe is on hand, some day, I will see if I can get anything
authentic and particular,–not, I fear, in time for you.

TO CHARLES WRIGHT.

CAMBRIDGE, June 28, 1871.

… Well, I say the same as then, only I feel sad about the chance of
the “Flora of North America.” What is my bête noire, as I said before,
is the care of the Garden; and till I can get rid of that, by some
complete reorganization, which shall result in the Garden’s being much
better seen to than it has been,–better taken care of and better named
up and superintended,–I shall not be comfortable nor of much use in
writing “Flora of North America.”

I am going to try if I cannot find or make some sort of superintendent,
and pay him out of what I pay for rent of house, and have succeeded in
getting credited to Botanic Garden fund. This will leave me to pay for
work in the herbarium (which is the work you prefer) out of the only
$800 a year yielded by herbarium fund, which has first of all to pay for
books, paper, fuel, and freights,–in short, most of it, and some years
all,–must come out of my own pocket, until I can find somebody who will
endow a curatorship. Or else I must put this work in the herbarium on to
my assistant, Farlow, who, however, will have his hands full enough
without it.

As to the way you are doing up Cuban botany, I do not find fault with
it. I think, with you, that you are doing about the best possible thing
under the circumstances. The only thing that you may justly complain of
me for, I think, is my sensitiveness and pooh-poohing new-species-making
in families where old species are yet all in a jumble, and where I have
thought that you could not yet tell what were new and what old. I dare
say I have been too impatient about it, and I see I have hurt your
feelings somewhat, which I am sorry for. I only meant, take time and
pains to clear up the old ones in the books, and get a better assurance,
if you can, about the proposed new ones. But, after all, it is wrong and
foolish in me to worry myself, or you, about them.

You will have more experience of the sort, in the working up of your San
Domingo collection. But if we can get time to refer doubtful cases to
say Oliver at Kew, and some one at Paris (where they have many old San
Domingo plants), I suppose you may get them pretty straight….

TO R. W. CHURCH.

September 10, 1871.

I have addressed the envelope for this letter before writing it,
determined to use once more the familiar superscription. The official
may bide its time.[89]

Only yesterday we learned of Gladstone’s doings by a newspaper slip sent
us by a friend who knew of you through us on the Nile, Mrs. Howland. But
I had a sort of premonition of it and was on the lookout….

I do not know where the Deanery is,–not in so attractive a situation as
Whatley Rectory, one may safely say. But I suppose you are not expected
to reside there in summer, that you will be fairly able to have some
country quarters to your liking. And there is Switzerland always within
reach. Happy mortals, who can reach the Alps within forty-eight hours,
and with only a narrow, though proverbially nasty, bit of water to
cross! But what we hope to gain from this upturning is to see you over
here. When Mr. Horner returns (we have heard nothing since they vanished
in the West) he will tell you it is no formidable matter even to cross
the continent. At least you can come and see us, make us a long visit,
and be as quiet here as in a Swiss wayside inn, and sally forth upon an
excursion when you like.

Please thank Mrs. Church from me for thinking of us, and writing the
very next day after this anxious matter was concluded. It is wonderful
she could find time, with so much to do and to think of. And such a full
account of the Swiss journey, too.

I owe you letters, too,–one at least lies reproachingly in a drawer of
my table, where it was thrust a long while ago along with many others
which could be postponed; but once postponed it is not easy to overtake
them.

Say to Mrs. C. it is not a part of our house which was moved; that would
not have been difficult, for it is of wood (though the herbarium, etc.,
adjacent is of brick). It must have been the Law School the moving of
which Mrs. Gray was describing. Tell Mr. Horner that, like some other
things, when once you have seen it done it ceases to be wonderful or
even difficult.

As to my lecture-room, etc., all work stopped for near a month,
including the fortnight or more when I was away; and now (September 11)
all has been clatter and hurry for the last week or so, and they really
seem determined to fulfill the terms of their contract, to finish by the
15th instant. They cannot do that; but I trust the workmen may go out
with the month. These cares of building have sadly interferred with
scientific work all summer. I have accomplished very little of what I
intended. I attended, and, when the last year’s president retired on
delivering his address, presided over, the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, twentieth meeting, at Indianapolis, capital of
the State of Indiana,–a journey of forty-eight hours, in very sultry
summer weather, over long stretches of country. I broke the journey by a
day in New York, to see two sons of Mr. Darwin just as they landed, and
by a three days’ stay, including Sunday, with my old friend Mr.
Sullivant, in Ohio. The meeting was a pleasant, though not especially
interesting one. I met botanical correspondents of many years’ standing
whom I had never seen. At the close we were invited to make an excursion
to the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, which I counted on seeing. But I found
that the excursion was to be an overcrowded one…. So I hastened
homeward, and was with Mrs. Gray at Beverly Farms, where she had been
passing holidays at Mrs. Loring’s at the paternal homestead on the
seashore,–a place that you have heard us talk of not a little. It is
delightful. I know nothing to give you so good an idea of it as the
Devonshire coast, there being plenty of wood quite down to the water.
Were we there now, Miss K. and Charles Loring would, I know, charge me
with messages.

I must tell you that the Scientific Association is invited to meet at
San Francisco, California, next summer; and that we have fixed the
meeting there conditionally, that is, in case the Californians care
enough for our presence to transport a certain number of our
representative men free of cost, or nearly so, across the wide
continent. If not, we are to meet on the northern part of the
Mississippi,–at Dubuque, Iowa, far enough west in all conscience, but a
place from which we may easily reach the Falls of St. Anthony and Lake
Superior. I must needs attend, as I shall have a retiring address to
deliver. And though I can ill spare the time or afford the expense, yet
Mrs. Gray and I are longing to see California. What say you and Mrs.
Church about joining us for your next summer’s vacation? The mountains
which form the sides of the Yosemite Valley will hardly offer as many
kinds of flowers as the alpine turf of the Riffelberg, but they may be
more novel to you….

* * * * *

On December 15, 1871, Dr. Gray wrote to President Eliot, after
describing formally the completion of the new buildings, and something
of the history and arrangement of the department, the following letter:

* * * * *

… I beg to add, for your consideration and that of the corporation, a
few words of a personal character.

With the present academic year I shall have completed thirty years of
service in the professorial chair to which I was called in the spring of
1842. The Garden, which had been under no professorial care for years,
and which has since had a long and hard struggle for existence, the
conservatories, the herbarium and its library, both steadily increasing,
and now the lecture-room, laboratory, etc., make up an establishment
which has grown by degrees into one which requires much time, care, and
anxiety to administer, and for which I have now done the main part of
what could be expected of me or any one man. The experience of the last
and the present year clearly shows me that the work of instruction,
steadily increasing in its demands under the present system, weighted
more and more with the load of administration, is more than I can carry
on. I have some warnings, besides, of the increase of years, which I
ought to consider; and I definitively propose to lay down, at the close
of the present academic year, as large a part of this load as I possibly
can without serious prejudice to this department and this establishment.
I suppose that either the duties of instruction or of administration,
beyond that of the herbarium, must be entirely surrendered. If I can be
spared, and if what I could do for the herbarium could be reckoned an
equivalent for rent of the house I reside in, I should crave to resign
both the charge of the Garden and of the professorship. There is reason
to think that the time is at hand when changes such as are here
suggested may be propitiously made.

When I came here, in 1842, I was carrying on and publishing a most
important original work, the “Flora of North America.” I have worked on
it from time to time, but I never have been able to publish any more of
it. And now what was done has all to be done again, and carried if
possible to a completion; and there is no one else to do it if I do not.
My educational books, or most of them, require to be re-edited; and I
fail to find time and sufficient freedom of mind for the undertaking. If
I could accomplish these tasks, or a good part of them, I am of opinion
that I should in consequence be able (as is especially my desire) to do
a great deal more for the university and the permanent interest of this
establishment than I can expect now to do, as at present situated, even
if it were possible or probable that I could so continue for any length
of time. I am,

Very respectfully and truly yours,
ASA GRAY.

TO JOHN TORREY.

CAMBRIDGE, January 4, 1872.

DEAR DOCTOR,–I have a horrid cold, which makes me unwell.

I write a brief line, in response to yours of yesterday, mainly to say
that I fear I disagree with you about the reply to be made to Wilkes’s
urgent request to print the manuscript of the Oregon collection of
Wilkes’ Expedition.

It was prepared to print long ago; is not your fault that it has been
delayed so long. The library committee have a right to print it, and
might do so without your corrections if you decline to make any. We want
the plates, which are now thrown away, and must be published. I would
print in the form of a naked list,–except where remarks and
descriptions are still wanted,–and to make all right and sure, and to
relieve you, I, with Watson’s kind help, will fix it all up for you and
read the proofs once, and so save you the worry. And I urgently request
you to send this line to Professor Henry, as embodying my opinion, and
my offer of help.

I am sure that if the rest of my manuscript is called for, I shall turn
it over with satisfaction, though the same applies to it as to yours.
And I should either alter accordingly or add notes.

The rest of your letter I will respond to in due time.

But I feel concerned to have those Oregon plates out.

I think I have some right to, as I paid for one hundred of them; but
that is no matter. They are now neither published nor unpublished, which
is a bad state of things.

* * * * *

Dr. Gray had the manuscript prepared some years before for the second
volume of the “United States Exploring Expedition,” and notified the
library committee that he was ready for publishing. Meantime came the
war, and there was no money or thought for such things. When the country
was again quiet and prosperous, the library committee who had formerly
known and been interested in the work and its printing had passed away;
there was no one to care for it, and the manuscript was never called
for.

TO CHARLES DARWIN.

CAMBRIDGE, March 7, 1872.

Mr. Packard, one of our best entomologists, a most excellent and modest
man, has asked to be introduced to you, that he may pay his respects.

I shy or refuse such applications generally, saying you can rarely see
visitors or callers. But Packard is “fish to your net,” has his head
crammed with facts bearing on derivation, is a disciple of the
Hyatt-Cope school, that you may have heard of,–people who have got hold
of what they call a law, though I do not see that they contribute any
vera causa at all.

If you will turn the world of science upside down, you must expect that
people will wish to see you….

May 31.

By the hand of an old correspondent of yours, and cousin of ours, Mr.
Brace, I send you a little book, which may amuse you, in seeing your own
science adapted to juvenile minds.[90] In some of those hours in which
you can do no better than read, or hear read, “trashy novels,” you might
try this instead. It will hardly rival “The Jumping Frog,” and the like
specimens of American literature which you first made known to us….

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

BOTANIC GARDEN, June 10, 1872.

MY DEAR DE CANDOLLE,–You must set me down as a faithless correspondent.
Your pleasant letter of April 6, from Paris, has been long upon my
table, and I think there is one of older date somewhere below. But all
this spring I have been so overworked that I could respond only to the
most necessary letters of business, duties of my professorship, of the
Garden, and many other things. Well, my lectures are over, and for the
ensuing year I may hope for some emendation. I give up the
superintendence of the Botanic Garden, which has become a great burden,
and I nominally devolve other university work in part upon an
assistant, surrendering at the same time a part of my salary, hoping
thereby to purchase time. We shall see if it be possible. But I have to
begin with a new assistant, who will need training; but will then, I
hope, take much off my hands. My youthful assistant of the past two
years goes in a week or two to Europe, to study in some German
university for a year or two; to Strasburg, I think, unless he first
should go to Sweden, and there study Algæ, with Agardh, if he will
receive him. He takes a fancy to lower Cryptogamia. His name is Farlow,
an honest, good fellow. He will most likely be in Switzerland in the
summer; and I shall give him a letter of introduction to you, whom he
will wish to know. But take no trouble on his account, except to
introduce him to Dr. Müller, from whom, as a working lichenologist, he
could learn much.

Well, Mrs. Gray and I are going to set out, two weeks hence, for
California. We both need the change, and are curious to see the country,
having never seen even the Mississippi! The scientific meeting was to
have been held there; but there is now a hitch about it. We go, however,
at all events, and expect to pass a month in the Yosemite Valley, and
elsewhere in the mountain region. I wish you were here to go with us.
Hooker was counted on to go with us; but the very bad state of his
mother’s (Lady Hooker) health, and the state of affairs at Kew prevent
it….

I hope soon to receive your “Mélanges historiques,” which are sure to
interest me. If I can I will write you a long letter from California, or
Utah, or the Rocky Mountains!–more interesting than this scrawl from
yours ever,

ASA GRAY.

TO JAMES D. DANA.

June 22, 1872.

MY DEAR DANA,–I fancy you have got hold of a good topic for your
handling, and have a promising inquiry before you, in coördinating
cephalization and natural selection as operative on the nervous system
of animals. I expect you to get something interesting out of it.

But every now and then something you write makes me doubt if you quite
get hold just right of Darwinian natural selection. What you still say
about struggle not applicable to plants makes me think so.

Suppose the term be a personification, as, no doubt, strictly it is. One
so fond as you are of personification and good general expressions ought
not to object to what seems to me a happy term.

Speaking from general memory, I should say that the term, as used to
express what we mean, was introduced by the elder De Candolle and
applied in what I thought a happy way to the vegetable kingdom. I cannot
drop it because you say there is no struggle where there is no will;
perhaps you mean without consciousness, and then the field of struggle
will be much limited. But call the action what you please,–competition
(that is open to the same objection), collision, or what not,–it is
just what I should think Darwin was driving at. Read “Origin” (4th ed.),
pp. 72, 73, and so on, through the chapter, especially pp. 81-86.

This is enough to show you that when you speak of “Darwinian struggle”
as occurring only “when the faculties of an animal are called into
requisition,” you take too limited a view of what Darwin means.

For myself I should say that the faculties of the lowest animals and the
faculties of plants were equally called into requisition in the case,
in a manner so parallel that there is no drawing any but a purely
arbitrary distinction between the one and the other.

I conceive one as effective as the other as regards the leading on and
fixing variation.

When I say now again that the expression “fitted by its regional
development to the region” conveys no clear meaning to me, I am only
telling you, as I did before, my way of looking at things, not finding
fault with yours.

By the way; “variation (inherent) in particular directions,” is your
idea and mine, but is very anti-Darwin. Good-night.

A. GRAY.

Dr. Gray greatly enjoyed his visit to California, with the long overland
journey thither. It was an ever-renewed excitement to see plants growing
which he had seen only as dried specimens, and the conductor of the
train was at last almost in despair at the scattering of his passengers
to grab what they could in the short halts, as they became inspired by
seeing Dr. Gray rush as the engine slowed, to catch all within reach.
Then when in motion again the specimens were brought from all sides to
see what they were. And the preparing and drying went on to the wonder
of some and the interest of all.

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

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

TO R. W. CHURCH.

CAMBRIDGE, October, 1872.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TO CHARLES DARWIN.

CAMBRIDGE, October 6, 1872.

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

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

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

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

December 2, 1872.

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

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

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

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

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

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

TO C. W. ELIOT.

BOTANIC GARDEN, CAMBRIDGE, January 1, 1873.

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

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

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

Very sincerely yours,
ASA GRAY.

_Messrs. the President and Fellows of Harvard College_:

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

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

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

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

CAMBRIDGE, January 14, 1873.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TO —-.

CAMBRIDGE, May 18, 1873.

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

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

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

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

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

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

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

CAMBRIDGE, June 12, 1873.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TO W. M. CANBY.

CAMBRIDGE, June 30, 1873.

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

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

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

CAMBRIDGE, July 7.

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

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

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

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

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

A. G.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

CAMBRIDGE, October 27, 1873.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ever yours,
A. GRAY.

November 26.

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

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

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

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

Very sincerely yours,
ASA GRAY.

TO CHARLES DARWIN.

May 12, 1874.

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

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

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

June 16.

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

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

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

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

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

Ever yours,
A. GRAY.

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

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

A. G.

CAMBRIDGE, June 19, 1874.

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

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

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

Yours affectionately,
ASA GRAY.

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

A. G.

TO W. M. CANBY.

July 6, 1874.

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

Ever yours,
A. GRAY.

BOTANIC GARDEN, July 8, 1874.

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

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

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

How does D. find out they digest?

July 14.

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

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

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

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

Ever yours,
A. GRAY.

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

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

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

TO WILLIAM M. CANBY.

BOTANIC GARDEN, March 13, 1875.

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

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

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

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

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION,
WASHINGTON, April 25, 1875.

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

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

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

CAMBRIDGE, May 8.

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

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

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

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

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

May 12, 1875.

Thanks for your letter and the Sedum.

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

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

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

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

I am proud of my little discovery!

Ever yours,
ASA GRAY.

TO R. W. CHURCH.

CAMBRIDGE, June 22, 1875.

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

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

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

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

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

October 11, 1875.

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

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

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

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

TO G. FREDERICK WRIGHT.[97]

BOTANIC GARDEN, July 1, 1875.

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

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

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

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

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

August 14, 1875.

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

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

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

September 14, 1875.

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

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

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

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

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

September 15.

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

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

November 10.

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

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

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

A. G.

January 14, 1876.

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

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

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

May 21.

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

December 20.

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

TO JOHN H. REDFIELD.

July 1, 1876.

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

TO MRS. GRAY.

June 11, 1876.

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

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

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

“Please let me see some plant.”

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

“Saxifraga irrigua, European. I do not want to see plants of Europe. Let
me see an American plant.”

I took another cover and showed Saxifraga peltata of California.

“Have you Sage-brush?” Yes.

“Let me see Sage-brush.”

I took him across the room to the Artemisias, and showed him, first, the
one he saw so much of en route to California; second, the northern one
to which Lewis and Clark gave the name at first.

“How do you prevent insects from destroying them?” They are all
poisoned.

“What do you poison with?” Corrosive sublimate dissolved in alcohol.

“How do you use it?”

Here I ran off and brought back the poison-bottle, and applied the
liquid to a specimen under the imperial nose.

I then ran off to set down the bottle in a safe place on the middle
table, when he followed me up and asked:

“How strong do you make the solution?”

I gave him the answer as well as I could, when he turned to one of his
suite:–

“Please write that down.”

And it was done accordingly. In the library I had displayed, enough to
attract the eye, the bound volumes of “Flora Brasiliensis,” which he
glanced at, and asked:–

“Have you the work on the botany of the vicinity of Rio Janeiro?”

I answered, Yes, thanks to Mr. Agassiz,–to whom the emperor had given
it.

But he seemed uneasy until he saw it, and I put two of the folio volumes
into his hands, which seemed to satisfy him.

Then, as he was passing on to the lecture-room, I slipped off. At head
of Common, in Boston, I met C., who told me Dom Pedro was down at his
museum at 7½ A.M. C. was not going to Hunnewell’s….

I amused them with the account of the conversation with the emperor.

The rhododendrons, and azaleas too, most splendid. Nothing like it at
Philadelphia. The best as well as the most he ever had….

TO R. W. CHURCH.

August 3, 1876.

It is very good of you to write to me. I was about to drop you a line by
the next post, when yours of the 21st came in.

My special object was to tell you that I have just had addressed to you,
through the New York publishers, a little book, made up of scattered
papers on Darwinian topics, which some of my friends thought it might be
useful to collect. I somewhat mistrust their judgment, but have yielded
to their request. There is nothing new in the volume, except a short
essay on the hypothetical duration of species, and a rather long one at
the end, upon teleology as affected by evolution, which I should be glad
to have you read, and should like to know whether you think it hits the
mark.

I have no idea who P. C. W. and the Westminster Reviewer may be, but I
suspect they are one and the same. If you should know, please inform
me…. Yes, it has been warm enough, and it was unceasingly so for
twelve days. Mrs. Gray rushed to the seashore at Beverly; but I mainly
stayed at home, kept out of the sun all I could, and rather enjoyed the
heat than otherwise. But at the end I broke down; came all at once upon
the novel sensation of being an old man. And so we hastened up and
concluded an arrangement which had been left loosely and vaguely under
consideration, viz., to revisit for myself, and to introduce Mrs. Gray
to, the higher Alleghanies in Virginia, Carolina, and Tennessee, where I
used to roam and botanize more than thirty years ago. We expect to set
out in two or three weeks. It is not Switzerland, but it is a region of
mountains, dells, and rills, and forests, which I have been longing to
revisit. Oh, that you could be with us! Two botanists will join us at
Philadelphia, and perhaps a third.

Among the very few copies of my “Darwiniana” which I have sent to
England is one to the editor of the “Spectator,” whose ideas fit in with
mine well, as I judge from reading the paper regularly. Do you know him?
He is a very broad churchman.

I am just beginning to print a portion of my new “Flora of North
America.” There can be no going to Europe for me till this volume or
half volume is off my hands.

* * * * *

Dr. Gray enjoyed greatly the journey through the North Carolina
mountains, and the traveling and accommodations were almost as rough as
in the journeys thirty-three and thirty-five years before. The people,
still cut off from the lower lands by roads that were mostly only used
for horses, and where one traveled sometimes two or three days without
meeting a wheeled vehicle, were very plain and primitive in their ways,
and one had to depend at times on their hospitality for accommodations.
But the scenery is striking and beautiful, and the forest unsurpassed
for the magnificence of its grand trees, rich in variety and beauty. The
party went first to New River Springs, then to the French Broad Hot
Springs, and round by a rough journey to Asheville, then far away from
railroads, where they were joined by Dr. and Mrs. Engelmann, and
continued through the mountains to Cesar’s Head, whence they made their
way by railroad through South Carolina and Georgia to Jonesboro; from
Jonesboro going up Roan Mountain, a camping-out excursion.

TO CHARLES DARWIN.

December 5, 1876.

… Curious that one species should take pains to close fertilize some
flowers, the other to cross all….

Now I want to beg of you to consider about a name for this kind of
thing, on which, as a good judge, you could consult Bentham, or indeed,
Hooker, if he can give it attention.

This matter will need to come into generic or specific characters, and
therefore wants a terse and unambiguous mode of expression in a single
word.

My old expression thirty or so years ago, “diœciodimorphous,” you
reasonably objected to, implying separation of sexes (which, though, it
need not do).

Yours of “dimorphous” should be, as the lawyers say, void for vagueness,
there being plenty of other kinds of dimorphism in flowers.

Hildebrand’s, of “heterostylous,” the difference being in other things
as well as style, and, I think, possible sometimes not in the style. The
term will not work well in characters, whether in Latin or English. I
have proposed, accordingly, in a little article not yet published, to
use the term “heterogone,” in other form “heterogonous,” in Latin
“Flores heterogoni,” with the counterpart “homogone,” “homogonous,”
“Flores homogoni.”

This means, you see, explicitly, diverse genitalia, and the [Greek:
gonê] is used as in the common botanical term “perigonium.”

TO R. W. CHURCH.

February 5, 1877.

Your friend Lord Blachford is an unrivaled expositor. I have just been
reading, with extreme satisfaction, his article on the Reality of Duty.
That naturally brought you to mind, and I vowed I would no longer be so
negligent, but would acknowledge and thank you for your letter of August
last, and for Professor Mozley’s sermons. They are excellent indeed, and
it is saddening to have a man of such insight laid aside by illness, of
a sort which probably does not diminish his desire, but destroys his
power, to work….

I think Mrs. Gray has given some account of our summer vacation. I long
to revisit those mountains when the Rhododendrons and Kalmias are in
bloom, and to have your company.

We are just home, Mrs. Gray and I, from a fortnight with our friends at
Washington,–a pleasant holiday, which of late I have always had at this
season, the time of the annual meeting of the regents of the Smithsonian
Institution, of which I am one of the lay (i. e., non-congressional)
members. It makes a break in the monotony of our winter, which is far
milder there than in New England, and the society at Washington is very
pleasant. More and more men of mark, and intelligence, and cultivation
reside there, at least for the winter months. We left on the day when
the contested electoral count began, under the arrangement so happily
and hopefully adopted. There is no excitement, and, outside of
partisanship, little care which way it is determined, but much that it
shall be legitimately determined by evidence, argument, and a decisive
judgment.

I am deep in routine botanical work, and with a printer not far behind
me, I can think of little else.

TO G. FREDERICK WRIGHT.

CAMBRIDGE, April 6, 1877.

DEAR MR. WRIGHT,–What can I ever have said or written which President
Fairchild takes to mean that I have the preposterous idea that “changes
of environment take place in distinct and definite lines”! He may well
ask if “this is not contrary to all evidence.” Even the conception that
variation takes place in definite, or at least not in indefinite, lines
is an idea which is rather thrown out as tenable, and as inferable from
a good many facts, than as anything to swear by. I think so, yet, I am
sorry to say, it is no part of Darwinism, pure and simple.

Now, in my turn, what does President F. mean by his “mere fact” “species
exist”? That seems to me no fact at all, but an inference. Individuals
exist; species are inferred from the relations the individuals are
observed to sustain to each other. That species are distinct, in the
sense of none blending, is what working naturalists would like to have
somebody settle for them in many a troublesome case. That they always
have been as much so as they are now is the question under
consideration….

May 24.

… Now we can’t go to see you, sorry to say. The reason is, that I am
working against time. Hooker is coming over, and we are going in summer
to the Rocky Mountains together, according to an old promise of mine. To
do it I ought to complete the printing of the part of my “Flora” which I
am upon, else I shall suffer in various ways, and there is great danger
that I fail.

… Do you notice–I know it will please you–how Kingsley caught at my
essay, which was reprinted in England long ago; see his memoirs.

1877.

I would say to President Fairchild something like this:

Where only one individual out of a thousand or a million can survive to
maturity and propagation, clearly only the very best adapted to the
environment will so survive; and in somewhat different environments,
only those best adapted respectively to the two, three, or more
different environments. The intermediates, i. e., those least
particularly adapted to the two or three different emergencies, surely
have least chance.

Now our species of plants and animals are the comparatively few
surviving lines of a great number of lines which have come down through
long and various periods of great tribulation, in the literal sense of
the word; they have been ground over and over, first on this trial, then
on that, leaving, as it seems to me, no chance of the survival, side by
side, of all sorts and shades of intermediate forms. Hence, under this,
and the general law of heredity, the practical distinction of species
and genera appears to be a natural result.

That low, and even the lowest, forms of life should survive and abound
all down the ages, and be the most widely diffused over the earth, seems
also the most natural result, being simple adaptations to simplest
conditions of air and water, so nearly the same the world over. These
are still far most numerous in individuals, and have, so to say, the
surest hold on life. When we think of the vast void below which the
“improvement” out of their sphere of these would leave, and the
increased risks which complicated structure (in machines or beings) has
to run, we shall not wonder that the simple still numerically
predominate.

TO CHARLES DARWIN.

CAMBRIDGE, June 10, 1877.

MY DEAR MR. DARWIN,–Except when you are to be aided in your work I
decline to give letters of introduction to you, knowing how you are
occupied and how infirm your health at any time may be. So please take
this note to mean just this. The happy couple who bear it would be
delighted to call some day, if you say so, and pay their respects to
you, and I will tell you why I am disposed to promote their wishes.

Mr. Burgess[100] was a favorite pupil of mine, and is a young naturalist
of much promise; not in my department, however, but in entomology. He
takes particularly to the anatomy of insects, draws capitally, and shows
talent for research, which we trust will bring forth good fruit. I
cannot blame him if his modesty and caution have kept him back from
publication as yet, but he has time before him, and even a sight of you
will be a stimulus to his ambition as well as something to remember in
after years. I need not say that he takes to Evolution; all young
naturalists of any good do. He has just married the daughter of my dear
old friend, the late Mr. Sullivant, who did for muscology in this
country more than one man is likely ever to do again. The young lady is
very dear to your good friend Mrs. Gray and to me; and, as you have more
than once made a remark complimentary to American ladies, and as you
are such an excellent judge, I must even give you the opportunity of
extending your range of instances.

But please do not give our young friends the opportunity of calling upon
you, unless it quite suits you.

By the time this reaches you, Dr. Hooker will be on the way to us, we
expect, and we are looking to have a great run together over the Rocky
Mountains, and perhaps across the Continent. Wherever we may be, you may
believe me,

Always yours cordially,
ASA GRAY.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

CAMBRIDGE, June 4, 1877.

MY DEAR DE CANDOLLE: … I meant to have a good portion of my
“Synoptical Flora of North America” to send you this summer; but it will
not be quite ready at the time I expected, and I am now likely not to
have this summer for writing, but rather for observation over a
considerable range of country. Dr. Hooker, it seems now almost certain,
is coming over in a month from now. Dr. Hayden has invited him and me to
join his expedition of exploration this year, or rather to make a survey
of much of his ground in the Rocky Mountains; and it is possible we may
even reach California. I am rather old for this work, but judging from
last year, I may well endure and enjoy it. Would that you could join us!

We are in essential accord as to subgenus and its nomenclature. Your
letter to Cogniaux discusses and decides–as I had done for myself–the
questions propounded. You will see I follow it out consistently in my
part of botany of California, while Watson was at sea in his, and would
hardly be convinced by my arguments. But he tells me he is convinced by
yours.

October 19.

… Our journey of ten and a half weeks, with Hooker, was a most
enjoyable one, every way prosperous, but laborious. Colorado to the
borders of New Mexico, a little of Utah and the Wahsatch mountains, and
extensive traveling in California, as far south as Monterey, and north
to Mt. Shasta. On return, I had Hooker’s copious collections to name up.
I made only small and special collections, and most busy we were kept
till, on the 6th inst., I put Hooker on the steamer, which, as telegraph
tells us, only yesterday reached Queenstown, so he will be landing at
Liverpool to-day,–a full fortnight from Boston to London. I am now busy
enough with bringing up arrears of correspondence and affairs, and
studying some collections which will not wait. Only by the end of this
month shall I get to resume my regular, but long, interrupted work. Mrs.
Gray accompanied us, and enjoyed it much, enduring well the occasional
camp life and such hardship as there was. You should come over, and we
will repeat the journey, but only three years hence. Much as I should
enjoy it, I cannot spare the time sooner.

I found myself quite equal to younger people in mountain climbing….

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

CAMBRIDGE, July 4, 1877.

DEAR OLD E.,–Never mind if you are seventy; Hooker is sixty, and I am
between, and we are lively yet.

Perhaps we young fellows may knock about rather faster than you like,
wanting to do much in a little time. But then, you need not do so much
in Colorado as we; take the easy part…. I shall be sorry if you fail
us.

We must twine in Cuscuta, as we twine in the rest of the book. For real
accuracy we must finally come to the terms I propose, entropic and
antitropic. We can’t get watch-hands into a good form for the
description of order, genus, etc.

Be sure I’ll keep you posted. Should like to go to Iron Mountain.

WAITING ON RAILROAD FROM CAÑON CITY
TO PUEBLO, July 21, 1877.

… If this flowering Euphorbia is the one you asked for I have made
good specimens. The round-leaved one is on the hills, and is not yet
out; is not the one, I am sure.

We had yesterday a good day (with Brandegee)[101] at the Arkansas Cañon;
it is grand, surely.

To-day Hooker and the Stracheys drive across and down Wet Mountain
Valley to La Veta (two long days), while we, Mrs. Gray, Dr. Hayden, and
I, return by railroad to Pueblo, and thence to La Veta, by sunset
to-day. To-morrow up to a camp on La Veta Pass of Sangre de Christo
Mountains, which Captain Stevenson is preparing.

Our English friends begin already to feel in a hurry, and for a wonder I
am the hold-back member of the party….

SALT LAKE, August 8.

I have yours of the 30th July, and I return inclosure. Write hereafter
to the Palace Hotel, San Francisco.

I trust, and expect, that the strike days are over, and that you will
severely punish the ringleaders.[102] Glad you have had nice weather;
but you have no air like that of Colorado and Utah….

Well, much as we miss and want you, yet we should have hurried you too
much. We want to go over a good deal of ground cursorily, rather than a
little thoroughly and leisurely.

I do not write you about the oaks at Cañon City, because we had nothing
new to say. We agree with you in the complete running together of the
oaks down to Undulata. There is one very large-leaved state, looking
very different; but it is mostly on fast-growing shoots, and no doubt is
a state of the “Q. alba, var.” of Torrey. “Alba” indeed! But we did not
find the entire-leaved form at the cañon, and Brandegee said it occurred
only at the mouth of the cañon, and near the city.

From Cañon City we–Mrs. Gray, Hayden, and I–went in one day south to
La Veta by rail, and the next day, toward evening, up to La Veta Pass,
10,300 feet, and over and 300 feet or so lower, where we camped, nice
tents having been provided by Fort Lyon en route, and other furnishings
from Fort Garland. Abies concolor abounded, though there was more of A.
Menziesii (Picea pungens) and Pinus contorta, and a good amount of P.
aristata and P. flexilis. The A. Menziesii at that elevation is less
prickly, sometimes almost as soft as A. Douglasii to the touch, and
cones inclined to be shorter. The result is, we think we can trace A.
Engelmanni into A. Menziesii. What say you to that?

Botanizing up there and in Sangre de Christo Pass good, but only
moderate; nothing new, and no great variety. We enjoyed camp life very
well; but after three days broke up, and went over to Fort Garland, and
thence, while the ladies and General Strachey went off to a Mexican
village, we had a two days’ trip up the Sierra Blanca. Alpine plants the
same as on Gray’s Peak, but scanty, owing to more southern latitude and
greater dryness. A longer time and a searching of the interior of this
very rough range might, and doubtless would, furnish much we did not
see.

Returning from Fort Garland to the railroad, we went back to Colorado
Springs and drove up to Manitou. Next day, we went up Ute
Pass–nothing–and looked about. Next day, to Garden of the Gods, to
General Palmer’s to early dinner, and thence to railroad and to Denver.
Next day, Denver. Next by railroad through Clear Creek Cañon and to
Georgetown, or within a mile, and thence up to Kelso’s Cabin, now a
well-kept house, to sleep. Next day, Gray’s Peak, and I crossed over to
the top of Torrey’s. Next day, after morning botanizing, came down to
Georgetown and visited Empire City and the Pecks. Next day, Sunday, a
restful morning, and then by rail back to Denver in the afternoon and
evening. Monday, off at half past seven to Cheyenne, and after dinner
took railroad to Ogden, and came up here last evening. To-day, a broken
day, sight-seeing, etc. To-morrow, we, or some of us, are going south to
American Fork Cañon; up that and over the pass into Cottonwood Cañon;
down that, and back here, in time to go on that afternoon to Ogden and
thence west to Reno, thence Virginia City, Carson, etc., and the Groves,
Yosemite, etc. We shall see, and I will let you know.

Mrs. Gray is out with the party, to see things, and Brigham Young. _I
will not._ She would be sending love to Mrs. Engelmann and you, if here.
She is very well, and enjoying this travel hugely. I am strong, and ever
yours,

ASA GRAY.

YOSEMITE, CAL., August 21, 1877.

… So long without touching a pen I can hardly form letters. Did I
write to you from Utah? We left direct route at Reno, went to Carson
City, with détour to Virginia City,–queer place; first got hold of
Pinus monophylla, but there no fruit.

Hired conveyance to take us from Carson right across the Sierra Nevada
via Silver Mountain to Calaveras Big Trees,–a good way for studying the
tree vegetation, and other, only all other is mainly destroyed by
drought and sheep, and the ground is powdered dust. As we struck Pinus
ponderosa we were struck with more tapering shape of tree and longer
leaves than that of Colorado, so different, and soon, as we rose, by the
immense size of cone, ovate, six inches long, very heavy. The big-cone
ponderosa has less bright green and rather longer leaves, and cones
looking quite different from the ordinary Californian ponderosa, which
grows intermixed, except at the higher levels, and has long but narrow
cones. Losing the big one as we descended to Calaveras, we come on it
again in the Sierra here, when we get up to seven thousand to eight
thousand feet. Here it passes for P. Jaffreyi or Jeffreyi. Is it so? Is
it distinct? On bare side of Silver Mountain we found P. monophylla with
cones, both maturing and this year’s….

CHICO, September 5, 1877.

… Thanks for your letter to San Francisco. We are keeping lively; are
on the way to Shasta.

What if we were to return via St. Louis: will you insure us against
malaria and fever? Want to talk Coniferæ with you….

CAMBRIDGE, September 24, 1877.

We are just back via Niagara; Hooker and I via New York, and the former
having the Sunday with Eaton at New Haven. All well and happy to get
home after a prosperous and, as you may imagine, laborious journey of
ten and a half weeks. The trip to Shasta involved long stagecoach
journeys, but they were most interesting. Returning to Sacramento we
went on to Truckee, where Lemmon[103] joined us by appointment. We gave
one day to Mount Stanford and one to Tahoe, then took the overland train
as it came on at midnight, and thence had no stationary bed till we
reached Niagara. And we live to tell the story!

I want to tell you what we are led to think about Firs and Spruces. I
will give in this my own opinions, which lie yet open, but are likely to
settle down, except you convince me to the contrary on some points.
Hooker comes to the same conclusions or nearly, but I will keep to my
own only in this letter, and ask what you think of them, off-hand. Your
reply will come to hand before Sir Joseph sails….

Some day you must have a picture of our camp on La Veta Pass. I wish
there could have been one of the Shasta camp of the Bidwells.

TO CHARLES DARWIN.

CAMBRIDGE, September 27, 1877.

MY DEAR DARWIN,–Returning from our ten and a half weeks of travel,
which has been every way prospered and pleasant, I find your book.[104]
I can now barely thank you for it, and for the great compliment of the
dedication. I must not open it till Hooker leaves me, a week hence, the
work we have to do before we part being so great and pressing. Then I
shall turn to it, with enjoyment, and as soon as I can find time I must
notice or review it.

Hooker sends his love; is very glad Cohn has taken up your son’s
experiments on Dipsacus, which reminds me to send my best thanks to him
for the copy addressed to me. For perusal, even for a glance, that, too,
must wait till we have worked up the collections and observations we
have made in our journey to the Pacific.

Let me add, being sure of your sympathy, that our poor dog Max
peacefully breathed his last to-day, after a happy life of twelve or
thirteen years. We are glad he lived till we returned, and greeted us
with his absorbing and touching affection. In a few days came a partial
paralysis, some convulsions, and then a quiet and seemingly painless
ending. He is immortalized in your book on Expression, and will live in
the memory of his attached master and mistress.

Max was a black and tan terrier, not remarkable in any way for beauty or
intelligence, but interesting from his warm affection and the power it
had in developing his intelligence. To be near and to please his beloved
master was enough for him. Anything his master did was right and to be
submitted to. Max had conscience, but it did not restrain him from
showing his vexation when left at home, by throwing Dr. Gray’s hat and
gloves, etc., on the floor; but his shame and penitence always betrayed
him. It seemed as if the joy of his master’s return had killed him.

Dr. Gray’s next pet was a very small puppy; so small that for the first
few months Dr. Gray would drop him into his pocket when calling on
certain friends. He was said to be a Japanese terrier, and grew to be a
great beauty, with long, white, curling hair (with some black markings)
to the tips of his ears and toes, and a tail like a plume, curling over
his back, all so fluffy he was given the name of Puff. Dr. Gray always
called him a “little pagan dog,” because, he said, his conscience was so
unequally developed. But though willful and obstinate, with great
self-sufficiency, he was very attractive. It was a piece of his mischief
as a puppy that called out the following letter from his master to Rev.
G. F. Wright.

TO G. FREDERICK WRIGHT.

CAMBRIDGE, December 11, 1878.

REV. SIR,–Will you be so good as to accept a puppy’s penitent apologies
for his naughtiness, and a new pair of rubbers in place of those which I
wickedly destroyed, because it was “my nature to” at the time you last
visited my master. I wish you to know that I am as sorry for it as I am
capable of being, that I have been punished as well as scolded, and
that the cost of the rubbers has been stopped out of my allowance.

So no more at present from your disobedient,

JAP. PUFF.

Dr. Gray’s last dog was a beautiful spaniel, and had the same devoted
love for him. He was very courteous and polite, and gentle and
affectionate. He needed a great deal of outdoor exercise, and was so
disconsolate and miserable at his master’s illness, that he was sent to
kind friends, where he still keeps a warm and loving greeting for his
old mistress.

TO R. W. CHURCH.

CAMBRIDGE, December 26, 1877.

Did I dispatch a line to you on or about October 1st,–one which would
have crossed your last to me? If I did not, it shows how a continual and
fixed intention works a sense of performance.

I took with me, on our travels, your letter of June 20, expecting to
write you from the Rocky Mountains or some far-away Pacific region. But
never were such busy people as Hooker and I the whole time. In fact, I
was bound to make Hooker see just as much as possible within our limited
time, and it seemed on the whole best for us to see very much in
glimpses and snatches rather than far less more leisurely and
thoroughly. He will have told you of our over nine thousand miles of
travel together, and of how he liked it. I think Mrs. Gray and I enjoyed
it most, and that we have a particular fancy for hurry-skurry
journeying. We should like to do it all over, and more. But especially
we should like to see California, in green attire. Not that we are not
interested and taken with the sere aspect of these western regions in
summer, which we fancy more than Hooker does. In fact, the greenness of
England is so congenial to him that he took more delight in our eastern
States, which he had mere glimpses of, than in all the wide western
region, though of course there was more to learn in these.

How I wish you could have been of the party! We dream of doing some
parts again, and of going both farther south and north, three years
hence. You and Sir Joseph would not then be too old. But I can hardly
expect then to be, as last summer, one of the most active and frisky
members of the party.

Moreover, the cost in time is more than one counts on. From the middle
of July to the end of September, one may, once in a way, fairly devote
to holidaying. But then, after a week or two of work with Hooker over
our notes and collections, I had to bring up long arrears, which I
should have kept in hand if I had stayed at home, and so I have only now
of late come to take up my regular work where I left it in July.

If you do not hear enough of our summer’s doings from Hooker,–and I
know he must be busy indeed,–we must get Mrs. Gray to write a
narrative; not that she is not also a busy soul.

All this time you have had anxious events to occupy your minds, and
these are not yet over. But at home you are happy in the recovering
health of your daughter after so long suffering.

We had our usual Christmas gathering last evening, and the house is only
now set to rights again. Your old friends Miss P. and K. L. were with
us, and we spoke of you. The latter told us that Miss S. proposes to
come to us from the West Indies, I suppose in early summer, and glad we
shall be to see her.

You never sent me your Middle Ages book; the publishers’ fault, no
doubt, which I beg you will urge them to make up for….

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

RIGHT
May 20, 1878.

… That enlarged photograph[105] is for you, to be left for your St.
Louis Academy of Sciences, if it ever gets a home, or for the Hortus
Botanicus Missouriensis, as you elect. Glad you value it.

I am at new edition of the “Structural Botany,” as a bit of ad interim
work.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

CAMBRIDGE, June 9, 1878.

MY DEAR COLLEAGUE: … A copy of the second part of the “Synoptical
Flora of North America” should soon reach you, for I was assured at
Washington that they were sent at once, and would go to you without
delay.

If the “Revue Scientifique de Genève” takes book notices, I shall be
pleased if you will notice this publication of mine. I send it to you,
and to Boissier; also to Maximowicz of St. Petersburg, but to no one
else on the Continent. It is put on sale with Trübner & Company, London,
and T. O. Weigel, Leipsic. I have defrayed the whole cost out of my own
purse, to the tune of $2,050. No publisher would take it, and assume
the expense, so I have to carry it myself and botanists must buy it, if
they want it. I hope many botanists and libraries will do so; for I must
get the outlay back again, or a good part of it, before I go on. Hence,
notices in the scientific journals and elsewhere may be serviceable to
me.

I will not speak of or count the time and hard labor I have bestowed on
the work.

My last visit to Washington was a sad one, to attend the funeral of my
dear old friend Professor Joseph Henry, to whom we are all greatly
indebted. When I saw him in January, at the annual meeting of the
regents of the Smithsonian Institution, it was too evident that he would
not much longer be with us.

* * * * *

As may be remembered, Dr. Gray, when in Paris in 1839, found in
Michaux’s herbarium a plant which he describes as new, giving it the
name of Shortia galacifolia, in honor of his old friend Dr. Short of
Louisville, Ky. One great object of his later journeys to the southern
Alleghanies was the search for this plant. No botanist had succeeded in
rediscovering it, and many doubted if Dr. Gray had not been mistaken,
though he found among Japanese plants, sent from St. Petersburg, one of
the same genus, with a rude Japanese woodcut. It was therefore a great
triumph when it was accidentally discovered by an herb-collector, Mr.
Hyams, in North Carolina. The next journey to the mountains, in 1879,
was planned to search for it especially.

An account of the rediscovery and a description of the plant is given in
“American Journal of Science,” iii., xvi., pp. 483, 1878. Mr. Sargent
repeats the story in “Garden and Forest,” December 19, 1888, and tells
how in 1886 he followed Michaux’s steps up the Keowee River, in the
mountains of South Carolina, farther south than the search had been
before, and was rewarded by finding the plant in abundance. Professor W.
W. Bailey, of Providence, then sent a note to “Garden and Forest,” to
say that to Mr. J. W. Congdon, then of Providence, belongs the credit of
having sent the first news of the discovery of the plant to Dr. Gray,
and tells of Dr. Gray’s answer: “If you think you have Shortia send it
on.” It was sent. Then came from Dr. Gray the characteristic postal, “It
is so. Now let me sing my nunc dimittis!”

TO W. M. CANBY.

CAMBRIDGE, October 21, 1878.

DEAR CANBY,–Thanks; glad you can come. You will be notified, if the
case comes on.

If you will come here I can show what will delight your eyes, and cure
you effectually of that skeptical spirit you used to have about Shortia
galacifolia. It is before me, with corolla and all, from North Carolina!

Think of that! My long faith rewarded at last!

Yours ever,
A. GRAY.

P. S.–No other botanist has the news.

October 28, 1878.

… I wrote to Hyams how much immortality he lost, or rather postponed,
for his son, by not sending me that specimen eighteen months ago, so
that it would go into “Flora,” but that I should make his name famous in
“Silliman’s Journal,” pro tem.

I took the latter end of his letter to be a cancel of his request to
return the specimen. Told him that in May either you or I or both would
be down, call for his boy, and be taken to the spot!

I have no objection to give him money for this specimen, if he wants it.
But I would not advise that he advertise it. But if he can find plenty
of roots, he might legitimately put them on sale, and get a good price.
Why should he not?

I did not say, before, that this discovery has given me a hundred times
the satisfaction that the election into the Institute did. That caused
no particular elation. This has been a great satisfaction.

November 5, 1878.

… I send a brief notice to “Silliman’s Journal.” And I am finishing an
account of the matter, which I will send to Paris, to Decaisne, for the
“Académie des Sciences,” as a “Correspondent” ought.

I have declined to risk the specimen by mail, till we get more, which is
not so certain.

November 9, 1878.

… He (Hyams) sent me some loose flowers, to help out.

I have sent manuscript to Paris, and shall send back Decaisne’s old
drawing, and drawing of flower and details, now making by Sprague to be
reproduced in the “Annales des Sciences Naturelles,” since this ought to
please the French.

You can go to see and get specimens, even if I do not. Yet I will go
if–at the time–I can.

April 5, 1879.

On April 1 (ominous day) began Compositæ….

TO G. FREDERICK WRIGHT.

April 1, 1878.

… I like an article to begin or end with an aphorism, or some sort of
snapper. I think you may end your next article with a condensed
expression like this: Not vitality but personality is the witness for
immortality!

October 24, 1878.

… Yes, I read with interest and approval your article on Hypothesis.

I am pressed with work now all this week. I would send you the proofs of
Newcomb’s article,[106] but you will get it in the “Independent” almost
as soon.

Read, mark, and tell me what I should say. I must now lay myself out on
this matter. If you will allow, I want to drop, throw out, praying for
the weather quoad weather.

I shall take my time, but shall be turning the matter in my mind, at the
end of this week and beginning of the next.

Perhaps I may see you on Monday here, unless I am called away.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

CAMBRIDGE, January 24, 1879.

MY DEAR DE CANDOLLE,–I have just returned from Washington, where I had
to read a memorial of our late secretary of the Smithsonian Institution,
Professor Henry,[107] and I have returned somewhat crippled by lumbago.
I took with me your pleasant letter of the 29th December, intending to
write to you from there, but I found no time. The present moment is
opportune, as I cannot well move about as I must do in my ordinary
work….

I have sent for Saporta’s book, and shall study it with interest. Glad I
am that your “Phytographie” is in hand. I wish I had it now before me;
for I have now to write something on the subject for a new edition of my
“Botanical Text-Book,” now in hand.

How well Bentham still writes and works! Notice his essay on
Euphorbiaceæ. You and Bentham have kept orthodox views of nomenclature
at the fore in Europe, and I have seconded them here, so that, except
among cryptogamists, heterodoxy makes no headway.

I have some ideas about the best form for Latin specific characters, as
distinguished from descriptions, as to punctuation, etc., which I wish
to present to you. Perhaps I can best, and soon, do so by sending you
proof-sheets.

The link which connected us with a former generation of botanists is
broken. Jacob Bigelow, the correspondent of Muhlenberg[108] and of J. E.
Smith, as well as your father, died on the 10th inst., at the age of
ninety-two. Up to three or four years ago he preserved all his
faculties. But sight and hearing gradually failed, and for two years he
has been merely alive; at length the candle burned out.

The genus Bigelovia, which your father founded on one species, is now
one of the most characteristic North American genera, of many species,
chiefly west of the Mississippi.

J. W. Robbins,[109] also of Massachusetts, one of the best and oldest
local botanists, died the day before, aged seventy-seven.

Engelmann (two or three years older than I am) and myself are now the
oldest botanists of the country, I believe.

While I live I am always your devoted,

ASA GRAY.

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

CAMBRIDGE, May 22, 1879.

… We go on a trip south to the mountains of Carolina with Canby,
Redfield, and this time Sargent.

It was to have been done whenever Shortia blossomed. But that stole a
march on us by flowering in April. So now we time it for the
Rhododendrons, and will see Shortia out of blossom, and we hope to find
new stations. Then I want to look up Darbya, of which only the male is
known. Curtis seems to have got it, without flowers, near Lincolnton.
Then we are to explore the east side of the Blue Ridge, from the base of
Black Mountain to Grandfather, and then cross to the Roan, on which is
now the Cloudland Hotel.

Oh dear! now that the time draws near, I wish I could stay at home and
finish Parry and Palmer’s[110] Mexican Compositæ, which abound with new
or interesting species!…

I send you by mail a copy of my new “Text-Book.” You see I relegate to
other hands the anatomy, physiology, and cryptogamia,–glad to be rid of
them. I send, too, one of the few copies of the Shortia paper. The
translator into French in several places missed my meaning. And the
explanation of the plate is a botch. I numbered only the floral parts I
now furnished, expecting the materials from Herbier Paris to make
another plate. Decaisne crowded all on one plate, and numbered to suit
himself, and then printed my explanation unaltered. The numbers do not
match at all….

TO WILLIAM M. CANBY.

April 25, 1879.

… About scheme: it is rather my notion to go via Statesville to
Newton, explore down one fork of Catawba, till we find Darbya, or find
Curtis’s locality, and back by the other; two days. But perhaps, to save
time, you would prefer to keep on the railroad from Statesville to
Lincolnton (where, by the way, Magnolia macrophylla grows), pick up
Darbya, and then come up to us at Statesville or Marion. Then we will
see locality of Shortia.

Then, my notion is to get some good searches along the flanks of the
mountains, from Swananoa Gap to Linville Falls (find Shortia for
ourselves, etc.), and even up to Deep Gap, which you see is pretty well
north. Then make Cowles tote us to Bakersville, and then end on Roan
Mountain.

There I and my wife would like to stay several days; and you, if it must
be, could leave us and get home.

But I am not particular, if you prefer a southern trip; down to Jackson
County, etc., and get Vasey’s new Rhododendron,–only a day south of
where we went before.

Sargent, our director, wants to go, and go in September, so that he can
get live things. Perhaps he will join us.

My wife’s desiderata are simply these: To see both Rhododendrons in
flower, and to get some rough wagon-rides. It seems not difficult to
satisfy her simple desires. Moreover, what do you say to our brothers
and our nieces, with their aunt? The nieces are trumps of girls for
traveling companions, and their father worthy of them. They are enticed
by our accounts of Rhododendrons and the nice rough times, and the
chance of sleeping in their spectacles, and Roan Mountain, where they
would like to stay a week! Perhaps even, we would show them New River
Springs with their rocks, etc., on the way homeward.

If they join us, it will probably be after we have done the Shortia and
Darbya business.

Is there yet any chance of Redfield? Now you look up routes, etc., and
give me your ideas. I wish we had your “heavenly weather.”

CAMBRIDGE, July 7, 1879.

MY DEAR CANBY,–Verses seem to be the order of the day. So here goes:–

With Misses L. the saying runs,
“However good a man be,
The most that can be said of him
Is, He ’s as nice as Can-be.”

… You will want to know how Mrs. Gray and I got on. Finely, with two
hard days at the close….

First day, we got round, retracing our old route, to Blaylocks, a hard
place.

2d. Traveled all day up the north fork of Toe, through scenery which
delighted Mrs. Gray greatly, to head of a fork thereof in Yellow
Mountains, and thence over to Cranberry Fork, almost under the shadow of
the Roan, or of that prolongation of it which we went to; nice food and
lodgings and the luxury of a separate room.

3d. Down Cranberry Creek and up Elk, over Elk Mountain (got Cedronella
cordata. Want any?), from which climbed to a good view, down to Valle
Crucis, and over to Boone, to sleep; a long day.

4th. Drove fourteen miles, partly on Blue Ridge, to Gap Creek, at noon.
Nice house. Very nice wife and children.

5th. Mrs. Gray rested. Cowles and I went up Blue Ridge, saw a fine
waterfall on the eastern side.

6th. Took in Mrs. Cowles, baby, and bright little girl. Drove fourteen
miles to Jefferson, picnic dinner on the way; stopped with an uncle and
aunt of Mrs. C. I and some Jeffersonians went up Negro Mountain;
collected Saxifraga Careyana at the original locality; took a view of
where Aconitum reclinatum must be, went for it, found it, some specimens
barely in bud, more in flower,[111] made specimens for you and for
Redfield, took roots.

7th. Cowles and family to wait and visit, while we took their wagon to
Marion, forty-five miles, too much for a day. (Good souls the Cowles!)
But when we had got on six miles, met a wagon from Marion, the men in
which proposed an exchange, which we (for the Cowles’s sake) gladly
consented to. Were to cross the Iron Mountain that day, if time held out
(which it did), and stop at a McCarthy’s at the foot, twelve miles from
Marion. Reaching the place just at dusk, the driver insisted that this
nice house was not the place, but a mile or two farther on. So we tired
people drove on by moonlight, three miles further, to find he was
mistaken, and no lodgings to be had, except possibly a mile further.
Came to a house, routed a man and wife out of bed, found a great fire
still on the hearth, no decent chance to sleep. Concluded the only way
then was to push on the eight miles more, so as to get the train the
next morning at 6.35. Got with difficulty a little corn for the horses,
brought out Mrs. Gray’s tea-kettle, made tea, ate the remains of our
dinner, and thus refreshed, jogged on; reached Marion at one A.M., slept
till half past five, rose, took train at 6.50. And Mrs. Gray still
lives! Were waiting hungrily for our breakfast at Wyethville, when,
three miles from it, a slight double thud, a down-brake signal, the last
breath of the engine, a stop. To our vast surprise, on looking out,
engine, and three cars, and first section of high bridge were missing,
and were débris in the abyss. No such accident could have been managed
with less shock to the nerves. And as to the result, had it been after
breakfast and passengers smoking in the second-class car, there would
have been a greater fatality (glad to say, I don’t smoke)….

There were weak ladies and hungry and sick children on board. I
clambered down the embankment with that blessed tea-kettle, to a poor
house, got a fire made, and hot water. Another traveler going farther
got a pot of coffee, nice bread and butter and cold boiled ham. And so
we fared till omnibuses came for us. At Wyethville a good hotel; got
word at length to Shriver;[112] and after a late dinner, an extra train
came down, took us to Lynchburg; reached Washington before 8 A.M.

I will send you good specimen of original Saxifraga Careyana, from Negro
Mountain. Send me a good large one from Roan. I will compare them soon.

TO GEORGE BENTHAM.

CAMBRIDGE, July 4, 1879.

Your last letter has gone to Engelmann, as I notified you; those of May
29 and June 4 overtook me in the mountains of North Carolina, where Mrs.
Gray and I were recuperating, but I was kept on the move from morn to
night. I could not thence write you on the matters treated of, nor is
there anything left to say….

Nature sometimes does what you hit me for suggesting, that is, “take
away the essential character,” and we have to put up with it, and allow
that we may have overrated the character.

But, when all is done, I will try on your view without prejudice, and
adopt it if possible.

About Ceratophyllum: I never followed up that early paper, of 1837,
because I soon saw that I was very wrong in supposing that the ovules of
Cabomba and Nelumbium were like that of Ceratophyllum, and I concluded
that my whole idea was baseless. I have not looked at the matter since,
but I shall be much surprised if you find that my youthful idea is
worthy of resuscitation.

We have come back from the cool mountains of the South to really hot
weather at the North.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

CAMBRIDGE, July 15, 1879.

MY DEAR DE CANDOLLE,–Your pleasant letter of the 3d June reached me on
Roan Mountain, in a comfortable little house, at the elevation of about
6,200 feet above the sea, enjoying glorious views of range after range
of the Alleghany Mountains, and on the grassy plateau Rhododendron
Catawbiense, perhaps more of it than in all the rest of the world, just
coming into blossom. Then the valleys and mountainsides all around,
covered with rich forest, are adorned with Rhododendron maximum, and
Kalmia latifolia in immense abundance and profuse blossoming, of every
hue from deep rose to white, and here and there, among other flowering
shrubs, Azalea calendulacea, of every hue from light yellow to the
deepest flame color. Mrs. Gray was with me, with her brother, two
nieces, and a botanical party consisting of Messrs. Canby, Redfield, and
Sargent. We traversed a pretty large and very wild region, much of which
I had before visited, some thirty-eight years before. We went to the
locality of Shortia galacifolia, discovered by Hyams; but our search for
new stations, or for the old one of Michaux, was in vain. But I have now
a clear idea of the district in which it may be sought. The known
station is probably one to which the plant has been brought down.

I have returned home to a crowd of work….

I wait with great interest your volume on Phytography. You will see that
in my new “Text-Book” we are quite in accord. I agree with you about new
and useless terms, and the execrable taste of the Germans.

I am very strong, and can climb a mountain as well as ever, only I lose
breath except I move slowly in the ascent.

Memory rather fails; otherwise I have at near sixty-nine all my
faculties in fair condition.

It has happened that I have visited Europe every eleven years. According
to that you should see me next year! I cannot promise; but I am always
affectionately yours,

ASA GRAY.

TO R. W. CHURCH.

November 11, 1879.

I forgot to ask if you, or your friend Lord Blachford, knew Arthur James
Balfour, M. P., author of “A Defense of Philosophic Doubt,” published
recently by Macmillan?

It is the most masterly essay I have seen of late years, and I should
like to know who the man is, and what you think of his book.

I have been drawn into promising, in an unguarded moment, to give two
lectures to the theological class of Yale College (our oldest university
after Harvard) some time in the course of the winter, on Science and
Religion; a topic which calls for wise speaking. I am not very hopeful,
but still I have an idea I may do some good. I wish you were in reach,
that we might talk over the subject….

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

CAMBRIDGE, January 1, 1880.

MY DEAR DE CANDOLLE,–Though I have entered on the seventieth year of my
age, I hold out well, and when other cares do not interrupt, I go on
with the “Compositæ,” yet all too slowly. Before I print them I shall
hope to have another inspection of some of the species of the
“Prodromus” in your herbarium; perhaps before this year 1880 is out, yet
it is rather doubtful. I get on slowly, and then Mr. Watson, who will
have the “Flora of California” off his hands as soon as he can get the
manuscript of the “Gramineæ” out of Professor Thurber’s hands, must have
a vacation ramble, probably to Oregon. If he leaves here in the spring,
I must wait his return here in the autumn, or at most cannot leave home
until after midsummer; too late to render myself at Geneva, I suppose.

Much of my time of the last few months has been occupied with the
details of building a small addition to our herbarium building to
contain the botanical library. It is just finished, and the books will
now be moved into it in a few days….

My health is excellent. Let us hope the same for you, and offer my best
wishes for the year 1880.

* * * * *

Dr. Gray delivered in the winter of 1880 two lectures to the theological
school of Yale College, on Natural Science and Religion.

They were long and carefully thought out, and he had great pleasure in
speaking to an audience who followed him so closely, and evidently with
such attentive sympathy.

He also enjoyed very much reading them, before delivery, to his friend
Dr. O. W. Holmes, in Boston.

TO G. FREDERICK WRIGHT.

CAMBRIDGE, January 17, 1880.

DEAR FRIEND,–We go Monday night on to Washington, leaving here at five
P.M. My lectures are fixed for February 5 and 6, so that I shall return
from Washington and go on specially to New Haven.

I expect to be at home the last week of the month, but perhaps not on
Monday, and I should wish to see you and read my second lecture, which
is dragging its slow length along!…

CAMBRIDGE, March 11, 1880.

I have this moment received and read from Newman Smyth a flattering
note, and a copy of his article in the “Advance.” A very good one it is,
and his own thoughts are noteworthy and to the point.

President Gilman of the Johns Hopkins sent me a very admiring letter, in
which he urges a student’s edition, on thinner paper and paper covers,
which he wants to subscribe for. I shall send it to the publisher before
long.

April 11, 1880.

I am amused at Professor —-’s substitution of demiurgism for
evolution, reprinted in the “Independent,” and at the coolness with
which the professor proclaims that a hypothesis which he thinks is good
for nothing else may be good to put against evolutionism.

Darwin has sent me advance sheets of his book on Advantage of Crosses
(not moral but floral crosses, and not crosses made of flowers, but
those made by insects and winds for the benefit of flowers), and I see
much in it which you will enjoy. I am too full of work to use it next
week, and if you tell me you will come Monday and take it, I will lend
it to you for that week.

Professor Fisher has sent me an admirable sermon on “The Folly of
Atheism.” Have you seen it?

… I would change a word in paragraph seven. If by proof you mean
demonstration of its truth, I remark that rational explanation of the
phenomena, so far as known, does not prove an hypothesis. Two different
hypotheses may do that; and it may long be impossible to get a crucial
test.

Sincerely yours,
A. GRAY.

Dr. Gray was at work on another part of the “Synoptical Flora.” Asters
had always been his especial study, and a great and puzzling labor, and
these few lines tell of his difficulties.

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

April 17, 1880.

We heard only incidentally of your accident, and were very sorry. Do be
careful. Don’t climb ladders. Leave that to young fellows like me!…

I am half dead with Aster. I got on very fairly till I got into the
thick of the genus, among what I called Dumosi and Salicifolia. Here I
work and work, but make no headway at all. I can’t tell what are species
and how to define any of them, nor what the nomenclature is, i. e., what
are original names.

I will take this group abroad, but it will be just as bad there, unless
I can get some settled ideas before I start. I never was so boggled.

To-morrow I’ll sit down and study your Pinus paper, which I have not
looked at yet, so absorbed have I been….

My old friend John Carey has died, in England, at eighty-three.
Schimper, they say, is dead. They go one by one!

CAMBRIDGE, May 8.

First, thanks for your very lively letter of May 4,–auspicious day,
being my wedding-day, thirty-second anniversary….

Yes, we mean to go abroad right after the meeting of American
Association, say September 4, to finish Aster, etc.; to stay at least a
year.

My wife sends best love to you, your daughter, and son, and I join.

TO JOHN H. REDFIELD.

CAMBRIDGE, April 21, 1880.

DEAR REDFIELD,–If you hear of my breaking down utterly, and being sent
to an asylum, you may lay it to Aster, which is a slow and fatal poison.

Apparently it will take a year or more for me to finish it, with the
greater chance that it finishes me before that time….

April 24.

Thanks for both specimen and sympathy. The former is here safely
returned.

The A. glacialis I must seek in Nuttall’s herbarium, now at the British
Museum.

The principal troubles in Aster are packed away, to try on again, in
London, Paris, and Berlin.

TO R. W. CHURCH.

CAMBRIDGE, May 17, 1880.

MY HONORED AND DEAR FRIEND,–Is it possible (I fear it is) that your
letter to me at the beginning of the winter (telling me who Balfour, M.
P., is) has been all this while unacknowledged? I fear it is even so.

In the mean time much has happened, at least in your old world, on which
interest centres; here not much, but constant and rather humdrum work
for me. We have got through the winter, a mild one, in contrast to
yours, so severe and trying, and our spring opens pleasantly; and Mrs.
Gray and I are well and happy.

You have had a parliamentary election, the result of which we delight
in, though it took us, and seemingly most of you, by surprise. I fancy
you are pleased to see Gladstone again at the helm, and still more at
the collapse of Jingoism,–not a moment too soon.

But let me hasten to tell you that Mrs. Gray and I contemplate crossing
the Atlantic early in September, and of passing at least a full year in
England and on the Continent. A busy year it must be, if my powers hold
out; for I must do a deal of work, and I want to have a little play. I
wish I could be more ready, by the finishing of my general study of the
vast order Compositæ, so that I might know exactly what researches I
must make in London, Paris, Berlin, etc. I have not got on as I
expected; but, as I am to reach seventy if I live to near the end of the
current year, I must no longer postpone my voyage. Indeed, I would leave
at midsummer if I could get away. But the American Association for the
Advancement of Science meets in Boston at the end of August, and has a
day in Cambridge. And it would not do for me, an ex-president, to turn
my back on it, and upon a houseful of friends whom we wish to entertain.
But the moment it is over we shall hope to be off.

I think I must work at Aster, etc., at Kew for a few weeks; and I have a
fancy for a run through the west and south of France and, perhaps,
Spain!

You will be returning from some summer trip about the time we reach
England. Cannot you and Mrs. Church get away from a dark and dull London
November, and go with us to a summer region!

I sent you my Yale Lectures, which had to treat difficult and delicate
matters. I find they have been useful to some on either side.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

CAMBRIDGE, June 8, 1880.

I have left your kind letter of March 11 too long unacknowledged. Now I
have to thank you for a copy of the “Phytographie,” which interests me
exceedingly. I have also to say that my plans for the year are so far
settled that I have engaged passage for Mrs. Gray and myself in a Cunard
steamer from Boston for Liverpool on the 4th of September, the earliest
date on which we could leave home.

But, greatly as you tempt me, and much as I should like to see you
early, we cannot reach Switzerland this autumn….

I should hope we might see you in early summer. So, pray, keep yourself
well and strong till then.

About the “Phytographie:” I shall have much to write, when I read the
book, which as yet I have only glanced at. About dextrorsum and
sinistrorsum: I think it is not quite true that the innovators have not
given any account of the grounds on which they rest. Mine are expressed,
I believe, in two or three notes in “American Journal of Science,” and
are summed up in my “Botanical Text-Book,” last edition, p. 516,
referred to in the glossary and index. I think that the analogy of the
right-handed screw indicates how the world in general regard it, ab
extra. There is a sensible note on the question in the late
Clerk-Maxwell’s “Treatise on Electricity,” vol. 1,–the reference is not
at hand at this moment. It takes, essentially, our (my) view as it seems
to me; but it refers to a similar confusion between the mathematicians
and the physicists.

I wish you had gone on to illustrate more of the words which have been
changed or confused in meaning; for example, “pistillum,” “cyme,” etc.

It is a pity that the terms of nomenclature had not been rearranged by
Roeper[113] so as to conflict less with those of Linnæus and the general
botanical use.

We have had our centennial of the American Academy; a pleasant
reunion….

Mr. Winthrop gave a good public address.

I get only slowly on with the Compositæ; my interruptions and
distractions are many and great. Fortunately I am in perfect health; am
outliving my chronic catarrh. I hope you may do so also!

June 28, 1880.

Yours of the 15th is duly received, with your pleasant remarks on my
lectures.[114] Professor Bourier is very welcome, and will please me by
using any part of them he chooses. I should like to see how they would
read in French.