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 faggedthat 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 givethe 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 7½A.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 whichthe “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 complimentaryto 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 wasat 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 Cityto 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 tothe 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 andover 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 seventhousand 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 Ihave 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, andwe 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.
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 storyin “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 ofhis 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 crippledby 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:—