I heartily admire your “Handbook,” and await with great interest your paper growing out of it; your experience is so great and your judgment so sound. As to English nomenclature, we can only approximate to a good system; the practical difficulties are too great, often insurmountable. It seems to me you hit the happy medium, if we must needs have popular name of the genus coëxtensive with the Latin one; but I rather doubt the advisability of that, and would use sub-generic popular names for generic, I think. Though “I do not much like” the whole thing, yet somebody must attend to English nomenclature, for better or worse; so I am glad you took it up.

I hope you will study perigynous and epigynous. As to ovary, which, putting the important part for the whole, we have learned to use in place of pistil, it certainly is perfectly novel to me to hear the name applied to the gynæcium of Ranunculus. I am confident the word is never so used in De Candolle or Endlicher. I do not recall any instance of your using the word in any such sense; I am sure I never did. Where the fact of the combination is doubtful or ambiguous, if I said ovary, that would infer the combination; if ovaries, the distinctness. In Apocynaceæ A. De Candolle steadily writes ovarium or ovaria, according to the nature of the case. Per contra, you might as well call the column of Malva a stamen! For the collective term, I wish, in your paper, you would go for restoring to use the Linnæan term pistillum, and against the habit of using ovarium in a double sense, that is, sometimes for whole female organ, sometimes for its ovule-bearing portion. Pray do not add a third; and so when you speak of ovary in Clematis leave us to gather, from the context, whether you mean, (1) the whole gynæcium; (2) a separate pistil; or, (3) the ovuliferous portion of a pistil.

Hooker calls my judgment about root and radicle “a flippant snub”! I beg a thousand pardons, and had no intention to be flippant or dogmatical, but simply to record a fact. For mistake, pray read take. My thanks for his letter of December 8th; will write him soon.

February 2, 1859.

I wish I had now your paper on geographical distribution, while I am working up the relations of the Japan flora in this respect. Where is Agardh’s paper published, and what does it amount to?...

I cannot answer Dr. Hooker’s exceedingly interesting letter about theoretical ancient distribution of plants this week. Tell him I shall have some evidence which will come well into his views as to north temperate zone.

TO W. J. HOOKER.

January 24, 1859.

I hope soon to hear that Government will acquire your herbarium, and make bountiful provision for its increase and maintenance. After all Brown’s genius, you have done more for botany than a dozen Browns, and made a hundredfold more sacrifices and efforts. To you, and to your son, England and the botanical world owe the greatest debt of gratitude,—a debt which I hope will continue to accumulate a long time yet....

TO JOHN TORREY.

January 7, 1859.

My dear Friend,—I will send your bundles presently, after Tuesday next, till when I must work like a dog, to get through the Japan collection, and read a paper on Tuesday at a social meeting of the Academy at Mr. Loring’s house that evening (January 11th). Now come on (if by day train), stop there, 8 Ashburton Place, where I will be.

I am going to hold forth for nearly an hour, upon Japan botany in its relation to ours and the rest of the northern temperate zone, and knock out the underpinning of Agassiz’s theories about species and their origin; show, from the very facts that stumbled De Candolle, the high probability of single and local creation of species, turning some of Agassiz’s own guns against him.

I introduced it here at Club, last month, and Agassiz took it very well, indeed....

I asked Thurber the name of a couple of Grasses. Let the Grass-man speak; now that he is turned out to grass, let him attend to his grazing.

February 19.

Andersson writes me that I am chosen one of the six botanists on the foreign list of Stockholm Academy, to fill the vacancy caused by Robert Brown’s death.

Friday evening, [April].

I have your two favors of 12th and 15th. I am very grateful for the nice care you take of my wife. You seem to have her under very thorough control.

Cure her up fast as you can, and please return her per railway on the 3d of May; for the 4th being the eleventh anniversary of our union, we must not be separated then—“The Union, it must be preserved.” ...

I send back your Cavendish with many thanks.

The old cock was much like Robert Brown in many respects. Though there is nothing in him to love, he calls out a sort of admiration, partly in the literal sense, that is, wonder, mixed with pity, that he had no feelings. Brown had, and besides he was social and not so very queer, but he lived very much in the same way, and I suppose had as little sense of religion.

Schreber spells Anthephora, but gives no derivation. P. de B., you see, does, so Anthephora is doubtless right.

Can that and Buffalo-grass be the same? I doubt. Has the Anthephora-like plant no stamens of its own?

The mode of growth does not so much distinguish your plant from Newberry’s Hemitones, and verily I suspect they are the same species. Pity you come in and spoil a good name!...

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

April 27, 1859.

I am charmed at the intelligence you give of your son, and that he takes to botany with spirit, so that he may continue the celebrity of the honored name of De Candolle in the third generation.

We shall welcome him when he comes to America and will do all we can to advance his objects. Oregon and the country to the north of it (British Columbia) will be in good and safe condition to explore, and I am convinced that there is still much to find in the Sandwich Islands, especially in the interior of Hawaii, where there is said to be a broad, almost untrodden, wooded region, between the principal mountain-masses, and occupying a good part of the interior of the island. But it will take time, patience, and considerable means to explore this region; provisions must be carried in for a long way, and many natives employed in feeding the exploring party. Next, the Kurile Islands, and all the northern part of Japan, Yesso, and the islands northeast of it offer the greatest interest; Manchuria also, but the Russians will look after that; Korea could perhaps be explored, so that the expedition you have suggested strikes my fancy as the best that could be, and would take your son through regions full of interest, safe to explore, and healthy. Certainly I can suggest nothing better.

Pray give my best regards to M. Boissier and to other friends in Geneva. I trust you will have safety and tranquillity in Switzerland. But it appears as if you would have war all around you,—a very sad state of things. Our latest intelligence looks very warlike, I am sorry to see. With all my heart I join in the supplication, “Give peace in our time, O Lord.” From such a war as is threatened no good can spring, in any result....

Ever and very cordially yours,

Asa Gray.

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

May 18, 1859.

Well, even $10,000 a year is much better than nothing for the botanical establishment. I wish we had half of that....

If Shaw will be liberal in his establishment, why not turn over to him your general herbarium? If I had one I could have free access to always, I would not take the expense and trouble of keeping up and increasing one myself....

So, you have made the capital discovery, and proved the so-called Anthephora to be the female of Buffalo-grass. I would not have believed it without direct evidence.

I cannot study it; it would take me a long while to get the case so before me that my opinion about the affinities of the grass would be of any use; but it is most interesting, and I beg you to work it out in detail and thoroughly....

June 6.

As to your own herbarium, I think you are right for the present. Keep you own; arrange it on paper of the size of Shaw’s. But look to an eventual combination, either in Shaw’s lifetime or soon after, and be open to propositions from Shaw; as, for example, to take your whole herbarium, provide for maintenance and increase, and when ready, to make you director of the whole concern. This duty must devolve upon you, and when it does, with a decent salary, you could reside up there, throw physic to the dogs, or only take a share in consultations, and have time to do yourself justice in botany.

Meanwhile, if Shaw would take your herbarium upon proper terms, you might at any time have any particular families of plants with you, in your house, to work at....

Mr. Shaw has lately written. I inclose his letter to you. I have just replied to it, expressing a lively interest in his projected establishment, and offering my best services if he requires them in the way of advice or suggestion. I hope it will be all right in the end....

CHAPTER VI.

LETTERS TO DARWIN AND OTHERS.

1860-1868.

The letters in this chapter also include the period of the civil war; into which, as they show, Dr. Gray threw himself with all his earnestness. He helped as far as he was able in every way. A company of the men who were too old or otherwise incapacitated from going to the front was enlisted in Cambridge to guard the State Arsenal there, and also to be ready to be summoned in any emergency; and he joined the ranks and was faithful in the drilling and every duty to which they were called. It is hard to realize, in these days, how all the community worked together in all possible ways; it was the business of life.

TO J. D. HOOKER.

Cambridge, January 5, 1860.

My dear Hooker,—Your last letter, which reached me just before Christmas, has got mislaid during the upturnings in my study which take place at that season, and has not yet been discovered. I should be very sorry to lose it, for there were in it some botanical mems. which I had not secured....

The principal part of your letter was high laudation of Darwin’s book.

Well, the book has reached me, and I finished its careful perusal four days ago; and I freely say that your laudation is not out of place.

It is done in a masterly manner. It might well have taken twenty years to produce it. It is crammed full of most interesting matter, thoroughly digested, well expressed, close, cogent; and taken as a system it makes out a better case than I had supposed possible....

I will write to Darwin when I get a chance. As I have promised, he and you shall have fair play here.... I must myself write a review of Darwin’s book for “Silliman’s Journal” (the more so that I suspect Agassiz means to come out upon it) for the next (March) number, and I am now setting about it when I ought to be every moment working the Exploring Expedition Compositæ, which I know far more about. And really it is no easy job, as you may well imagine.

I doubt if I shall please you altogether. I know I shall not please Agassiz at all. I hear another reprint is in the press, and the book will excite much attention here, and some controversy....

TO CHARLES DARWIN.

Cambridge, January 23, 1860.

My dear Darwin,—You have my hurried letter telling you of the arrival of the remainder of the sheets of the reprint, and of the stir I had made for a reprint in Boston. Well, all looked pretty well, when lo, we found that a second New York publishing house had announced a reprint also! I wrote then to both New York publishers, asking them to give way to the author and his reprint of a revised edition. I got an answer from Harpers that they withdraw; from the Appletons, that they had got the book out (and the next day I saw a copy); but that, “if the work should have any considerable sale, we certainly shall be disposed to pay the author reasonably and liberally.”

The Appletons being thus out with their reprint, the Boston house declined to go on. So I wrote to the Appletons, taking them at their word, offering to aid their reprint, to give them the use of the alterations in the London reprint, as soon as I find out what they are, etc., etc. And I sent them the first leaf, and asked them to insert in their future issue the additional matter from Butler,[45] which tells just right. So there the matter stands. If you furnish any matter in advance of the London third edition, I will make them pay for it.

I may get something for you. All got is clear gain; but it will not be very much, I suppose.

Such little notices in the papers as have yet appeared are quite handsome and considerable.

I hope next week to get printed sheets of my review from New Haven, and send them to you, and will ask you to pass them on to Dr. Hooker.

To fulfill your request, I ought to tell you what I think the weakest, and what the best, part of your book. But this is not easy, nor to be done in a word or two. The best part, I think, is the whole, that is, its plan and treatment, the vast amount of facts and acute inferences handled as if you had a perfect mastery of them. I do not think twenty years too much time to produce such a book in.

Style clear and good, but now and then wants revision for little matters (p. 97, self-fertilizes itself, etc.).

Then your candor is worth everything to your cause. It is refreshing to find a person with a new theory who frankly confesses that he finds difficulties, insurmountable at least for the present. I know some people who never have any difficulties to speak of.

The moment I understood your premises, I felt sure you had a real foundation to hold on. Well, if one admits your premises, I do not see how he is to stop short of your conclusions, as a probable hypothesis at least.

It naturally happens that my review of your book does not exhibit anything like the full force of the impression the book has made upon me. Under the circumstances I suppose I do your theory more good here, by bespeaking for it a fair and favorable consideration, and by standing noncommitted as to its full conclusion, than I should if I announced myself a convert; nor could I say the latter, with truth.

Well, what seems to me the weakest point in the book is the attempt to account for the formation of organs, the making of eyes, etc., by natural selection. Some of this reads quite Lamarckian.

The chapter on Hybridism is not a weak, but a strong chapter. You have done wonders there. But still you have not accounted, as you may be held to account, for divergence up to a certain extent producing increased fertility of the crosses, but carried one short, almost imperceptible, step more, giving rise to sterility, or reversing the tendency. Very likely you are on the right track; but you have something to do yet in that department.

Enough for the present.

I am not insensible to your compliments, the very high compliment which you pay me in valuing my opinion. You evidently think more of it than I do, though from the way I write to you, and especially to Hooker, this might not be inferred from the reading of my letters.

I am free to say that I never learnt so much from one book as I have from yours. There remain a thousand things I long to say about it.

Ever yours,
Asa Gray.

TO CHARLES L. BRACE.

1861 (?)

Dear Brace,—I should criticise various things in your last “Times” article, if you were here to talk it over with me.

If you expected Huxley to do what you criticise him for not doing, you would naturally be disappointed. His merit, and his way as a lecturer, is to select some good topic or point of view and make a clear exposition of it, the clearness of which very much depends upon his not scattering himself over too much ground. He naturally kept himself to matters he could handle well, and let alone those upon which, as we very well know, he had nothing in particular to say.

1. “Merest fancies,” “baseless fabric of a dream,” etc.

Why, what made Owen an evolutionist as early as Darwin? And what has made so many naturalists, Mivart, and lately Dana, for instance, evolutionists, who yet think nothing of Natural Selection?

But to illustrate. You allow that the evolutionary pedigree of the horse is made out. But what had “Natural Selection” to do with the making this out?

It would have been all the very same, both the evidence and the ground of the inference, if Natural Selection had never been propounded. There is no evidence how the forms were selected, there is simply the fact of the series of forms, which, with other like evidence, brings conviction to most naturalists that one has somehow come from the other. And this conviction is about as strong to those who do not believe “Natural Selection” will explain it, as those who do.

2. Professor Guyot, you mean. Dana avowedly adopts from Guyot.

3. To those who talk or think of necessary evolution, or, like Spencer, deduce it ex necessitate rei, this matter of immense time is very pertinent. I don’t think Darwin is bothered by it much. On my way of thinking, it is no bother at all, considering what a deal of time there has been anyway.

4. Do you mean “hybrid forms”? I fail to see what hybrids, that is, mules from the crossing of related species, has to do with it, one way or the other. Nobody (of clear conceptions) supposes new species come from the mixture of other species. That is a way to confuse or blend species, not to originate them. But there is no “want of hybrids;” there are plenty of them, and they have mixed some few species (dogs, for instance); but they play no important part in the matters you are considering.

“Want of connecting forms in living species,” that is to the purpose. Well, as a systematic botanist, I wish there was a want. The connecting forms are my great trouble every day. You would save me an awful deal of trouble, time, and constant uncertainty, if you would cause them to be wanting!

5. So you will not accept the motto “ex uno disce omnes.”

If you admit the horse’s evolution as proved, does not that carry an implication of evolution in other lines, of which similar, but fewer steps are known? Or are all evolutions those of cavalry?

Cambridge, June 17, 1862.

Dear Brace,—Thanks for the “World.” Who wield its destinies?

It is, I suppose, your article on Darwin, a very good one, for its purpose and space.

Before you too confidently reject the evidence for the existence of man in the diluvial period, just turn over a very impartial and good article by Pictet,—a good judge of such matters,—in the March number of the “Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève,” “De la Question sur l’Homme Fossile.”

I presume it is in the Astor Library. If it is not, you may tell Mr. Cogswell there might as well not be any Astor Library.

Ever thine,
A. Gray.

Cambridge, April 22, 1862 (?)

Dear Brace,—You are very welcome to such casual criticism as I can offer on your two pages of manuscript.

The general fact of a segregated people (or individuals of an animal species) becoming best adapted to the particular climate, etc., through Natural Selection is clear enough, the best adapted alone surviving in the long run, and the peculiarities transmitted by the close breeding.

But what your statements tend to make out is, not the tendency of a human race to return to its original type, but only the tendency of the causes which produced a certain effect once, to produce it again, the circumstances continuing,—to produce it in the Fellahs as it produced it in the remote ancestors of the Pharaohs.

That is all safe enough. But your case does not prove that unless you make out that the Egyptian race was nearly destroyed by crossings.

I do not know, but I doubt if you can show that the crossings were ever enough to modify the Egyptian people, at least the common people, who make up the bulk. Slight infusions, you see, would be worked out. The foreign though conquering race would be less prolific and less enduring than the native, etc., etc. So is it not likely that in the Fellahs you have the representatives of the old Egyptians continued, not reproduced, as your remarks would partly lead one to suppose your meaning?

Besides, once having got a race you must not make too much of climate, to the overlooking of the wonderful persistence of any variety when close bred. See the Jews: the nose remains hooked, etc., under all climates.

Again, in your last sentence. When you unscientific people take up a scientific principle you are apt to make too much of it, to push it to conclusions beyond what is warranted by the facts. But, because a particular race has persisted in Egypt, how do you know that it is the only race capable of perpetuating itself?

If there had been a large infusion of different people in Egypt, and if they had exterminated the old race, do you not suppose this would have established itself, perpetuated itself, and that its particular adaptations to the climate would have been different from that of the present race?

If you cut off all future immigration into North America, would the Indians resume possession of the country? or else our descendants become a copper-colored race?

Enough for the present. When you have cracked these nuts, send me, if you please, another sheet.

Ever yours cordially,
Asa Gray.

Cambridge, July 6, 1863.

Dear Brace,—Yours of 20th ult. came just as J. was off for New Haven and I getting ready to go to her aid.

We came back only on Thursday, or rather Friday morning. My hands so full that I could not write to Darwin, to whom I owe a long letter, till to-night. I will now inclose your note.

It would be very like a chemist to think that external influences will explain everything. But I presume he believes that peculiarities are heritable. If he does, then he thinks he can explain, or will be able to explain, the origination of variations. I cannot, that is, to any extent, and do not expect to. When he will show us how external influences actually worked to change a peach into a nectarine, I will consider his proposition.

If he means by “external influences” whatever has brought about the change, very well. I, of course, allow that every variation has a cause, a physical cause. But it seems to me you may as well say that conception and the production of a normal offspring is the result of “external influences” as the production of an abnormal (variant) offspring.

But there is no use writing at random.

You ask me whether I adhere to my notions before expressed, without at all showing me how they have been impugned.

I should rather expect Guyot to indorse Beaumont; a theological bias would act strongly.

But I rely most on Lartet, Coulon, and Pictet, for the age of deposit. Yet it may still be an open question....

Darwin, on account of his health, has to live away from London, and is a recluse. I give no letters to him, least of all to a lively inquisitive Yankee like Beecher, who would give him a fit of dyspepsia at once, from mere excitement.

I have the Imperial Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg honorary membership; quite a feather, as they are choice and few. Diploma just come.

Ever yours,
A. Gray.

TO R. W. CHURCH.

May 7, 1861.

It was very good of you to write to me (by your letter of 28th of March) when I believe that a former letter of yours was still unacknowledged by me. Your letters always give me much pleasure.

What you say of “Essays and Reviews” seems to me most sensible and well considered; the best thing I have read about the book, viz., that, “with many good and true things in it, it is a reckless book,” and that some of the writers had not taken the trouble to clear up their own thoughts and to form orderly and consistent notions before publishing upon such delicate topics.

I have not yet read the book; have only looked it over, and read some of the criticisms. When I have a few days’ leisure in the country, in July, I mean to read it carefully. After the flurry is over, I hope the book will receive the proper kind of handling in England, by the proper men. I wish you would think it in your way to write an essay upon some of the points at issue, upon which inconsiderate views are likely to be taken upon either side.

I confess to a strong dislike of Baden Powell’s writings. He seems to have had a coarse, materialistic, non-religious mind; at least, he is not the sort of man I should select to illustrate the delicate relations between religion and science.

I am gratified, also, by your apprehending the spirit and object of my essay[46] on Darwin so much better than many who write to me about it. All it pretends to is to warn the reckless and inconsiderate to state the case as it is; to protest against the folly of those who would, it would seem, go on to fire away the very ramparts of the citadel, in the defense of needless outposts; and, as you justly remark, to clear the way for a fair discussion of the new theory on its merits and evidence. We must use the theory a while in botany and in zoölogy, and see how it will work; in this way a few years will test it thoroughly. I incline to think that its principles will be to a certain extent admitted in science, but that, as Darwin conceives it, it will prove quite insufficient.

As to our country, we have been, as a people, undergoing a steady demoralization for the last fifteen or twenty years, the natural end of which lately seemed to be that we should crumble into decay almost without an effort at recovery. If it had been sought under legal forms and in a less outrageous spirit, I think the North would have consented to the peaceful separation of the cotton States, and we should have prospered by the separation. But it has become clear that there would be no living with such a people as our neighbors would be, so long as they allow themselves (against the better judgment of the best) to be ruled by the political demagogues who now hold sway over them. It is clear we must fight, and we had better do it now, and fight for the integrity of the country and the enforcement of the laws. So we are fairly and justly in it, and we are going to conquer the South. They have appealed to force. They must abide the consequences of the appeal, and, we trust, God will help the right. So you may expect to hear of stirring times here. Ever, with great regard,

Yours most cordially,
Asa Gray.

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

January 25, 1861.

The Union is overthrown by a conspiracy which would have been kept within bounds, and soon shut itself up, if the border slave States cared enough for the Union to take hold, or even allow it to be arrested or checked. But no, they must become insane, like the rest, and help it along. Virginia will not take hold and second Kentucky and Tennessee, fighting nobly by Johnson, Crittenden, etc., declare against treason first, and then arrange terms, which are all ready, all they want, for composing the difficulties.

But Cottondom will not have peace and union, and Virginia, etc., are foolish enough to help their game. That the border Southern States will be the principal sufferers will be only a righteous retribution for their guilt.

If, in fact, we only belong to a partnership which any of the partners can dissolve at will, then the Union is not worth having. We must do the best we can without it, and if Missouri would prosper, she should stay with us.

If peace is wanted, the reasonable proposition, “no more territory to be acquired without a majority of two thirds of the States,” would give it. With that you may do what you like, or rather what you can, in the present Territories. No more of the continent is worth having, either for North or South.

Posterity will judge rightly, and Toombs, Cobb, Floyd, etc., will go down to their graves as base, dishonored traitors.

My fighting days are over, anyway. I have had the misfortune to lose the end of my left thumb, by an accident, just at the base of the nail.

May 25, 1861.

I am very glad to hear from you. I believe I have a former letter from you unanswered. Lately I mailed to you some botanical pamphlets, one containing the Xantus California plants.[47] But in these times I had not the heart to write you. You have seen your dream of peace policy fall in pieces, and Douglas coming out for the war. You have also seen enough to perceive that under the let-alone policy Missouri also would have seceded, under the same discipline which has been applied elsewhere. In which event, let alone, St. Louis would dwindle to a country village.

No, the first and paramount duty of a country is to protect and preserve itself against destruction. The Constitution and government must be maintained, and treason put down if we are able to do it.

If it can’t be done, then, and then only, may we submit to disintegration.

Stick firm to the Union, and Missouri will come out well. I am sorry for the bloodshed at St. Louis. Your population is hard to manage. But Harney, as you say, is doing well, and I expect to see your State soon a loyal one. Even those with secession affinities must soon see their own interests. It is impossible there should be peace,—peace is not worth having till the rebellion, based on a plot formed years ago, is put down.

If you think me belligerent, I am nothing to Agassiz. Of course we shall all suffer severely. But better to suffer in devotion to the Union than prosper in petty fragments.

Enough of this. May God preserve and keep you, and let us hear from you when you can; for we take great interest in you, and know your position is a trying one.

Cambridge, August 6, 1861.

My dear Engelmann,—As soon as I got clear of college work, my wife and I started off (on the 12th of July) to visit my mother and friends in Oneida County, New York, where we rode and drove about in the fine air, over a most beautiful country, and enjoyed ourselves to the full, to her great advantage; also mine. Then we cut across the State to Pennsylvania, visited the coal region of north Pennsylvania; traveled very leisurely; passed through New York, seeing the Torreys three hours, and so to Litchfield, Connecticut, where Mrs. G. is left, and I am at home, to set to work again, having done nothing in botany except to teach since last April.

Now I am going to set to work as soon as correspondence is cleared off.

I found here also a letter from Dr. Parry,[48] and have named the specimens in both, sending the answer to you for forwarding, also Dr. Parry’s letter to me.

He can’t miss it if he keeps at work between Denver and Salt Lake, climbing to truly alpine regions as often as he can.

Dr. Hooker sent me last spring a fine cast of a bust of Robert Brown. To-day I have also from him a splendid one of his father, Sir William. Tell Fendler that Mr. Shaw should procure both if possible for the Library of Hort. Bot., Missouri.

What next? A young gardener has found a locality of Calluna vulgaris, covering almost an acre, within twenty-five miles of Boston; a case to add to Scolopendrium, Marsilea, etc., but most of all, striking and unexpected. It grows in low ground, and has every appearance of being indigenous.

August 27.

I hope and trust that Frémont will be strong enough to keep the war out of your neighborhood. The citizens of Missouri ought to volunteer in such numbers as to keep the rebels out of the State and keep the State true and firm in the Union. It is the cheapest and most honorable way, and will save property, avoid distress, etc.

This rebellion is certainly going to be put down, no matter at what cost, and property at St. Louis will be worth more than ever yet before you and I reach three score and ten.

November 11.

I think very little of Unionists who have been “made Secessionists” by anything. What matter whether you have one fifth, one tenth, or four fifths Unionists, if they will not fight to put down Secessionists,—they might as well be Secessionists out and out. Maryland and Missouri will not and must not be allowed to secede or to do seceders’ work, cost what it will. And it is a great blessing to them that we restrain them. The Union must be preserved; suffering is a very small matter in comparison—all must take their part, and the rebels must suffer hard till they give up. We are only beginning to fight. If Missouri wanted security she should have put down her secessionists herself with the strong hand, at the beginning. So of Kentucky. But she has been forced to find out and feel her duty and her honor, and to act.

God save the Union, and confusion to all traitors.

TO DANIEL CADY EATON.

Cambridge, October 4, 1861.

Your three parcels and letter of October first have duly come. I believe I never answered your note of August 28.

I can’t abide writing letters nowadays. But I think often of you. You are happy in being able to do something direct. I wish I could. Find me a useful place in the army, and I will go at once.

My wife and I have scraped up $550, all we can scrape, and lent it to the United States. I am amazed that people do not come forward with their money—those that can’t go to fight. I wish I could do both....

I have to-day a letter from Wright, September 4. He is of late botanizing with more spirit than formerly.

A sailing-vessel is up here for Santiago. I shall write by it, the United States mail by steamer being so interrupted, and perhaps send some publications, newspapers, etc. But I shall leave for you to send the “Flora of the British West Indies,” as you suggest. I could not spare my copy....

I hope this taking up of large transport vessels means something, and something prompt and thorough.

Thus far one is sick and sad, so little is done.

I had some hopes that your good father would be put at the head of the Commissary Department. I trust he will get promotion somewhat according to his deserts anyhow. Oh for faithful and honest officers and officials!...

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

Cambridge, January 15, 1862.

I do not like to write to you much about the war, and that is much reason why I have not sooner replied to yours of December 9.

My brother-in-law and his cousin are both officers in Burnside’s expedition, which we expect will do something.

Mrs. Gray and I send warmest New Year greetings to you and Mrs. E., and hope you may feel all right and country safe in 1863.

February 20.

Bravo for Illinois, to which victory at Fort Donelson is due, and bravo for Tennessee and Alabama full of Union men! Does not your old Union blood rise? Pray, now drop all your let-treason-alone, do-nothing-disorganizing notions, and go in for the country, the whole country, reinstate it first, and then we will all go in and make it what it should be. The ungenerous conduct of England shows what a condition we should be in as a fraction, and she playing off one portion against the other, and bullying both.

I pray Congress to put on taxes, five per cent direct on property and income, and heavy indirect besides. What is property! I would fight till every cent is gone, and would offer my own life freely; so I do not value the lives or property of rebels above my own. God bless you.

May 22.

A most lovely spring here. We all flourish and prosper, and rejoice in the strengthening of our national power, and advancing restoration of the Union, with hopes of hanging leaders of the rebellion, exiling a good many, and pardoning all the rank and file who will come back with a good grace to their allegiance. If they will not, let them beware! Væ victis to such.

The country is to be kept in the Union. If the people choose to stay, let them, and peace be with them. If they wish to emigrate, very well. The North, aided by immigrating Teutons, has great colonizing power, and we can rapidly settle Virginia, Tennessee, Mississippi, etc.

There, this is enough for the present to rile you.

As to Euphorbias, the published names here must take precedence to unpublished names of Shuttleworth, etc.

Ever your most peaceful friend,

Asa Gray.

TO CHARLES DARWIN.

Cambridge, October 10, 1860.

Thanks for very interesting letter of September 10. I am much pressed now, or would write a long gossiping letter. The bound copy of “Origin” is just received from Murray. Many thanks....

I believe I have seen a pod or two of Horseradish; but they are rare. Your germinations show curious resemblance of dimorphic-crosses with hybrid-crosses, as shown by Naudin; very interesting and capital points for you.

January (?), 1862.

I imagine it is now universally felt here that if we do not do it [i. e., carry on the fighting] we shall have to eat much dirt; that the establishment of a rival power on our long southern line of the free States, to be played off against us, is not to be submitted to if it can be prevented at any sacrifice. God help us, indeed, if our honorable existence is to have no better safeguard than the generosity or sense of justice of more powerful nations! As to slavery, the course of things is getting to meet your views, as it is clear must be, if the South continues obstinate. If they give up war they may save their institution in their own States, to have the chance of abolishing it themselves in the only safe and easy way, with time and the gradual competition of white labor. But obstinate resistance will surely bring on wide-sweeping manumission.

You see that we are not going to have war [with England] at present. And it appears that the decision of our government will be as unitedly and thoroughly sustained by the whole people as if it had been the other way; contrary to Mr. Russell’s prediction, and to our dear friend Dr. Boott’s, who writes about our “mob” in a way he would not if he were here to see. Look at an English mob urging up their government so that they felt obliged to back up their demands, with a menacing force on our borders; and making such a peremptory demand as you justly say, “entirely on Wilkes’ acting as judge;” a matter which our government would as promptly concede as yours could ask.

Seemann[49] wrote me that the general belief at the clubs and in the City was that our government wanted to get into war with England for an excuse to give up the South. A pretty idea they must have of our wisdom and discretion! Dear Boott is firmly convinced that we have all along been trying to quarrel with England. The belief here is nearly universal the other way, and those who like England best, and perhaps the coolest and best-informed men, have been more and more dissatisfied as time went on.

What has caused this lamentable state of things, this complete misunderstanding? Plainly this: the secessionists in England have adroitly managed the matter and led public opinion in various lines, but all in one direction, inimical to us; and they did not think it too great a stretch to make John Bull believe that we were insane enough to want an English quarrel. In this they have been ably seconded by a few papers here, mainly by those whose loyalty is deeply suspected, and whose influence is as nothing; which are nearly as scurrilous as the “Saturday Review,” with no redeeming ability, and you have the result.

Will the evidence that this mail carries satisfy the English that we want to live in peace with them?

But as to good feeling, I am afraid it is too late to expect that.

We were hurt at first by your putting our rebels on the same footing as a government with which yours was in most amicable relations,—and by the general assumption at once that we were gone past redemption, by the failure to see that the power had gone from the hands of those who were always making trouble with your government in some petty way or other, etc., till I think it is generally believed that the governing influence in England desires to have us a weak and divided people, and would do a good deal to secure it.

I am sorry to say that this is the general feeling; and this is now very much intensified.

The feelings of many are very hostile, and they would like to be strong that they might show it. Those of others, who have been exceedingly fond of England, always defending her when possible, and these are mine, are, that we must be strong to be secure and respected,—natural selection quickly crushes out weak nations; that we have tried long enough to have intimate relations between the governments, or the peoples in general. Naturalists, etc., being enlightened people, can be as intimate as they like; but nationally let each say, “God bless you, and let us see as little of each other as possible,” each going our own way.

Well, enough of this.

Some of the representations of us in the English papers would be amusing if they did not now do so great harm. One would think it was generally thought that there was no law and order here, nor gentlemanly conduct, nor propriety of deportment among the poorer and laboring people. I wish you could come and see. As to such things, and as to intelligence, education, etc., I have sometimes thought of the picture one could draw from individual cases. Take one—very confidentially—for I would not hurt a really good fellow by exposing his ignorance of what he might be expected to know. Here we lately had a Cambridge graduate (F. L. S., and godson of an English baronet) who in one conversation let us know most frankly that he had no idea where Quito was, or that there were two houses of Congress in the United States, and was puzzled to know whether Boston, United States, time was faster or slower than that of Greenwich!...

February 18, 1862.

Accept a hasty line at the present, when I am busy above measure.

Thanks for the Primula paper, which I have barely looked over.

I do hope that you and the other fourteen of your household are out of bed and done with influenza.

As I have not given you up notwithstanding your very shocking principles and prejudices against design in nature, so we shall try to abide your longitudinarian defection. I suppose it is longitude, and I am sorry to see that there is a wide and general desire in that meridian that we (United States) should fall to pieces. But the more you want us to, the more we won’t, and the more important it appears to us that we should be a strong and unbroken power. God help us, if we do not keep strong enough, at whatever cost now it may be, to resist the influence of a country which looks upon the continuation of our steady policy to protect and diversify our domestic industry as a wrong and sin against it. No, no, we must have our own way. But the triumph of the Republicans was the political destruction of the very people who were always making trouble with England, and, if you would only let us and have some faith in the North, we should have been permanently on the best of terms.

What you complain of in the Boston dinner[50] was indeed lamentable; such men should not have talked bosh, even at a little private ovation, and we have reason to know some of them were heartily ashamed of it as soon as they saw it in print. It was immediately spoken of here, by influential people, some of whom refused to attend the dinner, and in at least one paper, in a tone like your own. It was really as bad as the speeches of some members of Parliament, and worse because it was foolish.

The fact is, a set of cunning fellows on both sides of the water (but here utterly characterless) have contrived to make both English and Yankees believe that each was bent upon quarreling with the other.

Your thinking of me “as an Englishman” would once have been a compliment, and is what from my well-known feelings and expressions I have passed for among my friends here. Had the North gone on giving in to the South as for years past, I should have been one, at least in residence, just as soon as I could have got out of the country. I thank God, it has been otherwise, and that I have a country to be proud of, and which I will gladly suffer for, if need be. With all its weakness and follies (and I know them well) I go for my country, and to be friendly with those we ought to be on good terms with. I am cured of some illusions. We shall do very well, and the two countries will be on the best of terms when we are strong; till then we must not expect it.

If it is the old question of struggle for life, good feeling has not much to do with it: the weak must go to the wall, because it can’t help it. “Blessed are the strong, for they shall inherit the earth.”

My wife, who is loath to strike you from her books, begs you to make allowances for the people here, who were so very cocky at having caught two such ineffable scamps as Mason and Slidell, whom we have reason to hate with perfect hatred; that they thought of nothing else, and did not mean to be saucy to England. But you have made us sore, there is no denying it. We did not allow enough for longitude.

Her former message did not refer to Boott (though he is unfortunately influenced by longitude; but is a Yankee born), nor to Hooker, who, Gallio fashion, cares for none of these things; thinks us unwise for fighting, I presume; but we perfectly agree to say nothing about such matters. It is odd that you all fail to appreciate that it is simply a struggle for existence on our part, and that men will persist in thinking their existence of some consequence to themselves, though you prove the contrary ever so plain; and will strike or grasp or kick, right and left, in an undignified way sometimes; which the safe and sound bystander, coolly looking on, may not appreciate, not sharing his feelings, telling him the world will get on quite as well without him; yet he somehow does not quite like it.

March 6.

I have your note of February 16, about Melastomaceæ. The test of a good theory is said to be its power of predicting. If your speculations lead you to predict the style curved to one side in Melastomaceæ, and the prediction is verified, that will be a great matter in your favor. Why, you are coming out so strong in final causes that they should make a D. D. of you at Cambridge!

I shall be pleased if I can help you about Rhexia. R. Virginica grows not far from here, and I will set to watching it next summer. But I fear it may not help you, as it is stated in our “Flora of North America” to have “anthers uniform.” I see, however, the phrase, “style somewhat declined,” in the character; which must be looked to. The character was drawn wholly from dried specimens. I have good details from fresh ones drawn by Mr. Sprague, but cannot just now lay hands on them.

Freely point out anything else you want looked at. I have now a very zealous pupil, who will be glad to be intrusted with looking up plants and observing.

Ever yours, cordially,
Asa Gray.

There is some jolly science in the “Saturday Review,” now and then; as in December 28, p. 665, where we are informed that icebergs “are formed by the splashing of the waves on the coast of Labrador.”

Mill being “the greatest logician in England,” I send you an American reprint of a specimen of his logic, which I know you will like.

We are very sad here at the death of the president of our university,[51] who had also many warm friends in England.

March 31.

Yours of the 15th came this evening. To-morrow I am busy all day in college (where I began my course this year with lectures on Fertilization, developing your views on orchid-insect fertilization, dimorphism, etc., etc., to an interested class!), so I must drop a line for you into a letter for Boott, for Wednesday’s post.

A friend has just handed me Morell’s new book, which, looking at psychology from the physiological side, I see brings up several notions which have been turning over in my mind for some years. He is coming out a good Darwinian, I see, and is quite of my way of thinking about design. You see I am determined to baptize [“The Origin of Species”], nolens volens, which will be its salvation. But if you won’t have it done, it will be damned, I fear....

Things move on here, on the whole, very well.

Yes, I will promise not to hate you; quite the contrary!

Our sensitiveness as to England was the natural result of the strong filial feeling on our part. It was very undignified, I dare say. But I think we are getting bravely over it, and getting really not to care what the Old Country may think or say, so it lets us alone.

As to Rebeldom, there is now hardly any State that we have not got some foothold in.

I do not do so much scientific work as before the war, but still I keep pottering away. From now till July, I can expect to do little besides my college duties. Ever, dear Darwin, your cordial friend and true Yankee,

A. Gray.

May 18.

Yesterday came by post the sheets B-I of your Orchid book.

This evening (Sunday) I have opened the parcel and read introduction and chapter i. What a charming book it is! You are right in issuing it in this form. It would be a sin not to do so.

I fear, though, that no publisher would reprint it here; though I may, on reading farther, conclude to offer it to the Appletons, who should have the refusal. But it will surely be popular in England, where orchids are popular and the species known to most intelligent and educated people. I hope soon to get the other sheets. I am perfectly delighted with O. pyramidalis, and must extract the whole account of its fertilization for “Silliman’s Journal.”

Our only orchis, that is, O. spectabilis, I brought last summer from western New York, and planted. I shall in a week have three or four spikes coming into flower, and I will cover one and leave the others exposed. They are in a wooded part of the garden, like their natural habitat. The rest of our Ophrydeæ are Habenarias (Platanthera).

I must recur to your letter about Cypripedium and see what you wanted of it, that is, what observation.

If there be any adaptation, be it ever so pretty, I shall never see it without your direction. What a skill and genius you have for these researches! Even for the structure of the flower of the Ophrydeæ I have to-night learned more than I ever knew before.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

Cambridge, April 26, 1861.

My dear Friend,—My duties in the university at this season are very pressing. Besides, we are now opening a war, upon the determination of which our very existence depends, and upon which we are to concentrate all our strength and soul, so I have no time nor heart to write of botany just now....

Ever, dear De Candolle, yours most cordially,

Asa Gray.

December 16.

We do not often exchange letters now, and in these for us trying times in the United States, though far removed from the actual scenes of war, and not much interrupted in my botanical studies, except by distracting thoughts, I write as few letters as I can. The unfriendly attitude of England gives us much concern. Were it not for that, it is thought we should soon put an end to our rebellion. But I will not write of such matters now.

July 2, 1862.

No fear about our army, now so great. It is largely composed of materials such as nothing but a high sense of duty could keep for a year in military life. It will dissolve like last winter’s snow when no more needed.

While I write, a great battle is in progress, decisive if we gain it and take the rebel capital, simply prolonging the strife if we do not. We can raise at once another army if need be; and yet another. Indeed 300,000 more men are now to be accepted, to recruit our ranks and make a sure thing of the result.

Confident of our cause, we expect confidently the favor of Providence....

What a charming book is that of Darwin on orchid fertilization!

TO CHARLES WRIGHT.

Cambridge, April 17, 1862.

I am at work in college now, you know, and it is very hard work. This last vacation I had to make a new edition and new additions to my “Manual,” etc., and to do it in a hurry, and I have at length, for the first time, found out that I am growing old. In fact I broke down under it, and have injured my health a little.... I doubt if I ever recover the spring and vim of former times. But we shall see....

My hard work has got correspondence all horridly behindhand, and determined me to draw in my horns, and drop a good deal of it. My desk has long been so covered deep with unanswered letters, etc., that I have abandoned it, and now sit over on the other side of the table.

If I sit down and answer a letter right off the day it comes, as I am now doing with yours, and as I do with purely business letters, etc., then it is safe. If I add it to the heap, it is a gone case, and I fear will never be really answered.

Eaton, too, as you know, has been very hard worked, in his father’s office.

Well, there is no State now in some part of which the star-spangled banner does not float. Lincoln is a trump, a second Washington, steady, conservative, no fanatical abolitionist. Foote, of your State of Connecticut, is putting down his foot on the Mississippi. McClellan is to fight a great battle at Yorktown. Another bloody battle may be fought near Corinth, Mississippi. New Orleans will soon be ours, please God, and then this wicked rebellion will be done for. I pray God I may live to see the end of it, and the States brought back, quietly if they will, forcibly if they must.

I know it will rejoice your heart to see the thing done. And it will be worth all it costs.

Come now, here is a good long letter for a man as tired as I to write, who has been five or six hours in lecture-room, working hard.

August 1.

Here is a bit of reading for you,—substitute for letters, which in truth I have not surfeited you with lately. Who can write letters in these trying times?...

Last spring my health felt pretty seriously impaired. But by end of June I was able to diminish my college work a little, and take the rest easier, and so now I feel very much better, more like my old self, and I am beginning to clear off my table that I may get at work again on that everlasting South Pacific Exploring Expedition.

There is a charming book out, by Darwin, on the fertilization of orchids by insects. It will open your eyes to most curious things. I have verified much myself here, and made observations which Darwin regards as very interesting. I send you a copy of the book through Eaton, as a present.

Any observations or notes you make I will send to Darwin.

TO CHARLES DARWIN.

July 2, 1862.

I am glad if my off-hand orchid notes interest you, or prove of the least use. I am daily expecting a copy to send you of my notice of the early chapters of your book. I will continue in the ensuing number. And whatever of the notes I send you seem to you worth touching upon, you have only to indicate them, and send back my memoranda, and I will take them up. But as to Cypripediums, I should like to have an opportunity of examining them (except C. acaule) more at large, and growing.

A week from to-morrow, I expect to be able to leave Cambridge, to go down, with my examination papers to read, to my beau-père’s place on the shore, for a few days. Then I will try to look up and bring home living Rhexia Virginica; and also I expect to have a look at Calopogon pulchellus, with its strong bearded labellum. And I hope it will not be too late to get plenty of Mitchella repens, which my pupils do not bring me in as they ought. I want to see if long-styled stigma and short differ, and also the pollen of the two, as they do in Houstonia, of which I hope I sent you Rothrock’s[52] observations. At least I will send when he has completed them.

Precocious fertilization in the bud was much noticed here very long ago by Torrey, in Viola, Specularia, etc., etc., also in Impatiens, about which see my “Genera Illustrata,” volume ii. I once mentioned it to you as good evidence of close fertilization. As to pollen-tubes of such, I have no observations of my own, but a memory or fancy that they were shown to me by Torrey. I will ask him, and have him look at Specularia.

As to the French lady’s translation and commentary on the “Origin,” I am not so much surprised. As I view it, there are only two sides to the main question. Very likely she takes one side in a thorough-going and consistent manner; and either she is right, or I am right, i. e., there is design in nature, or there is not. The no-design view, if one can bring himself to entertain it, may well enough lead to all she says, and we may very much admire how collision and destruction of least-favored brings about apparently orderly results,—apparent contrivances or adaptation of means to ends. On the other hand, the implication of a designing mind must bring with it a strong implication of design in matters where we could not directly prove it.

If you grant an intelligent designer anywhere in Nature, you may be confident that he has had something to do with the “contrivances” in your orchids.

I have just received and glanced at Bentham’s address, and am amused to see how your beautiful flank movement with the Orchid book has nearly overcome his opposition to the “Origin.”

The military simile above leads me to speak of your wonder that I can think of science at all in the midst of war. Well, first, we get used to it. Second, we need something to turn to, and happy are they who, forbidden to engage personally in the war (as I am ever itching to do), have something to turn to. Third, I do not do much, do nothing, in fact, except my college duties now for months, and that is the reason I have time to write to you, and be interested in all your doings.

If you suppose everything is paralyzed and desolate here, and the country greatly put back, read a very sensible letter of an Englishman in the “Spectator” of June 7. It is very just and true. We shall recuperate fast enough, and be better off than ever, as much prosperity as is good for us, and more solid, more independent, more self-contained, which is our great desideratum. Free trade be blowed; we must needs have high duties on imports, and it is better that we should. By these and by direct taxes—the tax-bill just passed—we shall have to pay over largely. Very well.

Just at present our prospects (viz., evening of July 3) are looking badly enough. McClellan has clearly been overmatched and driven to the wall, after very obstinate fighting, with very heavy loss on both sides. Whether it is retrievable with reinforcements, or whether the whole campaign has to be begun again against Richmond, is not yet clear. Anyway we have got to put shoulder to the wheel anew, and it may be done, we suppose, more easily and far more promptly than last year. All we ask is that Europe shall let us alone.

Enough for to-day.

Providence, R. I., July 29, 1862.

No more news in the orchids line. I am making two or three days of holiday, and yesterday I found a few specimens of Gymnadenia tridentata. But the flowers are too small to examine well with a hand lens. If they keep, I will take them back to Cambridge in a day or two and see what to make of them....

As to the country, you will see by this time that we have not the least idea of abandoning the struggle. We have learned only that there is no use trying any longer to pick up our eggs gently, very careful not to break any. The South forces us at length to do what it would have been more humane to have done from the first, i. e., to act with vigor, not to say rigor.

We shall be complained of for our savageness, no doubt, whereas we feel that our error has been all the other way. But the independence, the total indifference to English feeling which you recommended last year, has come at length; now we care nothing what Mrs. Grundy says.

Cambridge, September 22, 1862.

Your pleasant epistles of August 21 and September 4 are to be acknowledged, with thanks. But I have nothing in particular to communicate, except our hearty congratulations that your boy and Mrs. Darwin are recovering so well.

Tell Leonard that I was pleased both with his attention in writing and with the ocular proof of his convalescence in his being able so soon to use a pen. His requests shall be kept in view; the five-cent stamp I send now; dare say I shall sometime pick up the thirty and ninety, though I never saw the latter, nor the twelve, twenty, and twenty-four on envelopes (the twenty-four cent he must have already, as it is often used on my envelopes to you).

Bravo for Horace, whose illustration of Natural Selection as to the adders is capital. A chip of the old block, he evidently is.

I told you that Rothrock had gone to the war, and perhaps has already been under fire; probably not. I had intended that next spring he should do up Houstonia more perfectly, and work up this and some related matters for his thesis when he comes up for examination. But all this is broken up by his enlistment....

I have been lazy about all my writing, working all day at dry and dull systematic botany, which you anathematize. But if I get time to turn it over, I will say a few words on the last chapter of your Orchid book. But it opens up a knotty sort of question about accident or design, which one does not care to meddle with much until one can feel his way further than I can.

October 4, 1862.

I have just been reading Max Müller’s lecture on the Science of Language with much interest. But perhaps what has interested me most is, after all, his perfect appreciation and happy use of Natural Selection, and the very complete analogy between diversification of species and diversification of language. I can hardly think of any publication which in England could be more useful to your cause than this volume is, or should be. I see also with what great effect you may use it in our occasional discussion about design; indeed I hardly see how to avoid conclusion adverse to special design, though I think I see indications of a way out.