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
THE RANGE OF BUILDINGS, BOTANIC GARDEN IN 1893THE RANGE OF BUILDINGS, BOTANIC GARDEN IN 1893
THE RANGE OF BUILDINGS, BOTANIC GARDEN IN 1893
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, andhave 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 ofbrick). 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 placethat 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 completedthirty 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 anymore 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, willfix 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, sayingyou 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 Inominally 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 wereequally 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 thenext 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 thisplace, 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 tenP.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 MississippiRiver, 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 andlocal 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 Mississippito 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 chargeof, 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 andI 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 ofhood 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 havestudied 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 toreclaim 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 inmaking 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 thepublishers 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 “tomany,” not “inmany.”
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.—Mypoint(which isblunted) 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. Buthedid.
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 nowalmost 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.