LETTERS OF ASA GRAY

EDITED BY

JANE LORING GRAY

IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II.

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1894
Copyright, 1893,
By JANE LORING GRAY.
All rights reserved.

CONTENTS.

Note on the Illustrations. [The frontispiece portrait of Dr. Gray] is a photogravure from a photograph taken in 1880. The plate of Dr. Gray in his study, facing [page 529], is from a photograph taken in 1879. The view of the present Range of Buildings in the Botanic Garden, facing [page 614], is from a photograph taken for this work.

LETTERS OF ASA GRAY.

CHAPTER V.
SECOND JOURNEY IN EUROPE.—CORRESPONDENCE.
1850-1859.

Dr. Gray sailed for England with Mrs. Gray in a sailing packet June 11, 1850. The steamers made regular trips, but the fine packets were still running, and it was thought desirable to try the longer voyage for Mrs. Gray’s health.

Dr. Gray renewed acquaintance with his old friends, and made many new ones, meeting at his friend Mr. Ward’s, where they first stayed, many of the younger men, Henfrey, Forbes, etc., who had become known in science since his former visit in 1839.

TO JOHN TORREY.

Ghent, Belgium, July 16, 1850.

I surely meant that you should have heard of us long ere this. But there seemed not to be a moment of time during the fortnight we spent in England; Mr. Ward kept us so busy with every sort of engagement and sight-seeing that J. could enjoy. I meant to have written at Dover last evening; but it was not convenient, so now that we are for the first night in a strange country (which England is not) I must tell you, what I trust you have learned from Carey (to whom I had occasion to write hurriedly, last mail), that we had a very pleasant voyage of seventeen and a half days and came near making it in fourteen, as we made land early on the morning of the twelfth day out, no storms, but gentle favoring breezes till we made the Irish coast; and then, to our disappointment, we had head winds to beat against all the way up to Holyhead, and reached Liverpool Saturday morning....

On Monday we left Liverpool, which has vastly improved since you saw it; stopping at Coventry and turning off to Leamington to see, at Darlington’s desire, the descendants of old Peter Collinson,[1] and deliver some books and letters from him, which I did. Mrs. Collinson was ill with a severe fall, but her daughter received the things I brought, and showed me a portrait of Peter. Then Mrs. Gray and I made an excursion to Warwick Castle, the fine ruins of Kenilworth, and Stoneleigh Abbey, driving through six or seven miles of fine park. The next day on to London, to Ward, who had insisted on our visiting him. He lives three and a half miles out of London, in a pleasant and quiet suburban house; his son being established in Wellclose Square.

Boott I saw the same evening I arrived, and two days later, with J., but not later. He has been quite sick with an influenza, and a slight but not altogether pleasant inflammation of the lungs.

To Hooker I went at once also, and got your kind letter there, and saw Kew. Hooker is quite well; but Lady H. is very poorly.... She inquired most particularly and affectionately after yourself, and asked about all your family....

On Monday I made another visit to Kew Gardens, (a grand affair) to show the lions of the place to four or five young Americans I knew, one of them young Brace,[2] J.’s cousin, who is making with two friends a pleasant and profitable pedestrian excursion in England.[3] I cannot begin to tell you the half we have done and seen in England, but we were most busy: Saturday, conversazione of Royal Botanical Society in Regent’s Park. Wednesday, excursion with Linnæan Club to Hertford; saw a great Pinetum, 600 species of Coniferæ, etc., and the Panshanger Oak. (I wrote Carey a few words of this.) Thursday, a most pleasant day with Hooker. Miss Hooker looks quite well; all send their love to you, all most kind and sweet to us. Hooker has altered little, but looks older. Brown looks older perhaps, but decidedly stronger, is as healthy as possible and very lively. In talking with him and showing him about it he gave up about Krameria, and said I must be right. He formerly unequivocally referred it to Polygalaceæ. Bennett is large and fat. I fear he does not work hard enough.

Yesterday we came down to Dover early in the afternoon (a striking place), and embarked late in the evening on steamer for Ostend, which we reached early this morning; came right on to Bruges, which listless and very curious old-world town, and its curiosities, we have all day been exploring, till six o’clock, when we came on twenty-eight miles further by railway to the famous and more lively town of Ghent,—where I have been running about till the dusk arrived, and must now to bed, as we have to finish Ghent to-morrow before dinner, and go on to Antwerp afterwards, thence to Cologne. I think we shall cut Brussels.

At Ghent saw the Belfry and the strange old Town Hall.... I went to the Botanic Garden (did not find Professor Kickx),—hardly as large as ours at Cambridge, and by no means so rich or half so well kept, though said to be the best in Belgium; explored the university library, and strolled through the streets and along the canals....

Antwerp.—Imagine us settled comfortably at Hotel du Parc, Wednesday evening, overlooking the Place Verte, our windows commanding a near and most advantageous view of the finest cathedral in Belgium, with light enough still to see pretty well against the sky the graceful outlines and much of the light tracery and Gothic work of this gem of a steeple, one of the loftiest in the world (403 feet, 7 inches) and probably unsurpassed by any for lightness, grace, and the elaborateness of the carved work. Napoleon compared it to Mechlin lace. And such sweet chimes, every fifteen minutes! The chime at the beginning of the hour still rings in our ears. We have never tired of listening to it....

Bonn, July 22.

We drove through the city (Cologne) to the station of the Bonn railroad. But on the way the driver, of his own motion, stopped at the door of the cathedral. Finding that we had time enough to take a good look before the train left, we could not resist, and saw this wonder and masterpiece of true Gothic architecture; which by the united efforts of most North German powers is going on toward completion, in the style and plan on which it was commenced seven hundred or eight hundred years ago, and in which the choir was finished, and the transepts and nave commenced. It is most grand; the grandest thing we ever saw, though the nave bears only a temporary roof, at thirty or forty feet less than the full height. The ancient stained glass comes fully up to one’s expectation. I have never seen the like.

We went up to Poppelsdorf; such charming and picturesque view of the Siebengebirge (seven mountains) and the Godesberg, etc., from the professor’s windows and the Botanic Garden; the museums rich and curious, and parts of the old château in which they are (now surrendered to the university) not less so. The botanical professors, Treviranus[4] and Dr. Roemer, very kind; some collections to be made ready here for me to examine when we come back, so that I must then spend a day here....

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

Geneva, August 16, 1850.

We went up the Rhine to Coblenz, Bingen, and Mayence; thence to Frankfort. By some mistake in the post office in giving me the address, your letter to Dr. Fresenius[5] I took to a law-doctor Fresenius, who was away in Switzerland. So I gave up all hopes of seeing him, and we fell to seeing the sights by ourselves, when, a few hours before we had arranged to go to Heidelberg, the true Dr. Fresenius came in. We may see him again on our way back. We went to Heidelberg, for an hour or two only....

It is now the 20th,—time passed fast. I work to-day in herbariums De Candolle and Boissier, and to-morrow morning we go to Freiburg and Berne and the Bernese Oberland. We cannot be back now in England so early as we expected; but still hope to be there by the 20th September....

Thursday morning, after an early breakfast, went on by railroad to Kehl; left our luggage and took a carriage over the bridge of boats, across the lines of the French republic (?) into Strasburg. Saw Schimper;[6] then we went to the cathedral, viewed the grand front of this imposing structure, and the wonderful spire, the tallest in the world; were much struck with the grandeur of the interior, wholly lighted by stained glass, the greater part of it 400 or 500 years old. After visiting the Museum of Natural History, and arranging with Schimper to meet him in Switzerland, where he is to pass with his wife (a Swiss lady) a long vacation, we took our carriage and returned to the Baden side of the river, and came on to Freiburg (in the Breisgau) that evening, reaching it in the rain....

Professor Braun,[7] the brother of the first Mrs. Agassiz, was very kind to us. He is a very interesting man, of charming manners; his wife very sweet and charming, his children most engaging. Saturday afternoon we took a carriage, and with Professor Braun rode up a beautiful valley to the Höllenthal (French, Vallée d’Enfer), a rocky and wooded gorge of very striking scenery; wild and majestic, rather than terrible, as its name imports....

In the afternoon visited the cathedral, one of the finest and oldest in Europe, that is well preserved. Here nearly every part, and all the stained glass, of a most curious kind, is perfectly preserved; and the spire, though not so high as that of Strasburg, is as elaborate and light,—as it were of woven stone thread,—and even more beautiful....

Tuesday we rode from Bâle to Bienne (fifty-six miles) in a diligence, from eight A.M. to five P.M., through the Münster Thal, the grandest and most picturesque scenery of the Jura.

Wednesday, a ride of three hours along lakes of Bienne and Neuchâtel brought us to Neuchâtel at eleven o’clock A.M. ... Professor Godet,[8] who received me most cordially, took me (with Mr. Coulon) up the Chaumont, 2,500 feet; but the Alps were obscured by clouds, at least the higher Alps, and we had no fine view of them; otherwise the view was very fine. We returned by the great boulder Pierre à Bot. All asked after Agassiz with much interest. Excursions are planned for us when we return....

Dr. Gray enjoyed the visit to Geneva, where he renewed his friendship with MM. Alphonse De Candolle and Boissier, accomplishing some useful work, and having pleasant social meetings and excursions. He went to Chamouni and the Bernese Oberland; then to Munich, especially to meet again Martius, with whom he had been in constant correspondence, and who made the journey from Tyrol to greet his old friend. Their few days together were greatly enjoyed.

He returned to England, going down the Neckar by steamboat to Heidelberg, then down the Rhine, and through Holland, where he saw Miquel[9] in Amsterdam, rambling with him on a fête-day through the streets at evening, enjoying the queer sights; went to Leyden, meeting De Vriese,[10] with whom was R. Brown (then staying in Leyden for a few days), and seeing the Botanic Garden, one of the oldest in Europe, and well known to Linnæus. Blume[11] he missed, but he saw Siebold’s[12] collection of Japanese curios, then most rare. He took steamer from Rotterdam to London, and after a few days went down to Mr. Bentham’s, in Herefordshire.

Here were spent two months of very hard work with Mr. Bentham, who most kindly went over with him the plants of the United States Exploring Expedition, which had been brought over the Atlantic for the purpose.

Pontrilas is in a pretty, hilly country on the border of Wales, with many old churches, almost of Saxon time, in the neighborhood, to give interest to walks, and very interesting, agreeable neighbors for a day or two’s visiting, among them the authoress, Mrs. Archer Clive, who was very kind.

He left Pontrilas early in December to make a visit, at Dublin, to his friend Professor Harvey, to stay in the family of Mr. and Mrs. Todhunter, Dr. Harvey’s sister. Going on board the steamer at ten in the evening, he met with the severe accident of which he gives an account in his letters. Dr. Harvey came from Dublin to help in nursing him. His vigor and elasticity helped him to a speedy recovery, but it increased a general tendency to stoop, and he was never so erect afterwards.

He was able to get to Kew the last of December, and spent the winter in hard work in Sir William Hooker’s herbarium, which was then in his house at West Park.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

Cumberland Place, Kew, December 28, 1850.

Your kind favor of December 6th, forwarded to me by Bentham, to Dublin, would have been sooner acknowledged, but that it found me an invalid. On our way from Hereford to Dublin I had just gone on board a steamer at Holyhead, early in the evening; had left Mrs. Gray in the ladies’ cabin, when, coming on deck again, I stepped over an open hatchway which had been left for the moment very carelessly unguarded and unlighted. I fell full eighteen feet, they say, to the bottom of the hold, striking partly on my right hand and the side of my right leg, bruising and straining both, but principally on my right side against a timber projecting from the floor, fracturing two of my ribs. It is truly wonderful that I was not more seriously and permanently injured. I was taken on shore at once and had good medical attendance. I recovered so rapidly that in a week I was comfortably taken across to Dublin, where I was kindly cared for by good friends; in two weeks more I left for London, able to walk without difficulty; and to-day, just four weeks after the accident, I have begun to work at plants again, in Sir William Hooker’s herbarium. But my side is still tender, and my strength is not great.

Having said thus much of my bodily condition, let me no longer delay to thank you heartily for the very unexpected compliment that you have caused to be paid me, and to ask you to convey, in fitting terms, my grateful acknowledgments to the Société de Physique et d’Histoire Naturelle, for the honor they have conferred upon me in choosing me as one of their corresponding members. I was not aware that I had rendered any particular services to your society, but I shall be very glad to do so if any opportunity offers. Although, generally, I am far from coveting compliments of this kind, I assure you I am much pleased to be thus associated with several valued personal friends, my contemporaries, and with such highly honored names of the past generation....

We had eight weeks of most pleasant and profitable labor at Pontrilas, and Mr. Bentham has rendered me invaluable assistance.

Mrs. Gray joins me in the expression of kind remembrances and regard to Madame De Candolle and yourself.

Believe me to remain, ever most sincerely yours,

Asa Gray.

Since Dr. Gray was so near Sir William, and working in the herbarium almost every day, there was much meeting of old friends, and of many of the men distinguished in botany. Robert Brown, with his keen observation and dry wit, he saw constantly at the British Museum, Dr. Wallich,[13] Mr. Miers and many others. There was some social visiting in London and the neighborhood. Mr. Abbott Lawrence was then American minister in London, and he and Mrs. Lawrence were very kind and attentive, giving him a chance to see at an evening reception some of the great men of the London world: the Duke of Wellington, Lady Morgan, Whewell the Master of Trinity, Lord Boughton, Lord Gough, and many others.

It was the year of the first great World’s Exhibition, and the building was then considered very wonderful. Through the kindness of Professor Lindley he was enabled to see it before it was completed.

There was a very charming visit to Oxford in March, where Dr. Gray made most delightful acquaintances. He there first met Dean Church, then a fellow of Oriel, who had him to dine. He also dined with Mr. Congreve[14] at Wadham; met Maskeleyne, who showed him “some fine talbotypes, which are a sort of daguerreotype on paper, and have a beautiful effect for landscapes and buildings.” Breakfasted with Mr. Burgon and Mr. Church, at Oriel, in Dr. Pusey’s old rooms, and met Mr. Burgon again at dinner, when dining in the “Common Room,” at a dinner given him by Mr. Church, and also Buckle and Sclater. Dr. Jacobson, then Regius professor of divinity, afterwards Bishop of Chester, and Mrs. Jacobson, were very kind. Dr. Daubeny was then professor of botany at Oxford, and there were some plants to look at in the small herbarium kept in the little Botanic Garden in an old greenhouse. The days were crowded with interesting sight-seeing and in meeting agreeable people.

From Oxford, Dr. Gray went to Cambridge, where he met again a traveling acquaintance made on the passage from Rotterdam, Dr. Thompson, then Greek tutor, later Master of Trinity, who was very kind in doing the honors of Trinity, King’s Chapel, etc. At his rooms, Dr. Gray met Professor Challis and other Cambridge men. The grounds about the colleges were then at their greatest beauty, the banks of the Cam yellow with primroses, the whole setting off the beautiful bridges and stately buildings. Another traveling acquaintance met in the street, recalling an experience on the Furca, asked Dr. Gray to dine with him at Caius College, saying his name was Mackenzie. He was Bishop Mackenzie, who died in south Africa.

On returning to Kew, Dr. Gray found Dr. Joseph Hooker, just back from his journey to the Himalayas and Thibet. Dr. Thompson[15] was also there, just home from India, where he had been imprisoned with Lady Sale and others, twenty of them in one small room, during the trouble in Afghanistan. And one day came an invitation to lunch from the Hookers’, “to meet Mr. Darwin, who is coming to meet Dr. Hooker; is distinguished as a naturalist.” “Mr. Darwin was a lively, agreeable person” [Mrs. Gray’s journal].

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

5 Cumberland Place, Kew, April 14, 1851.

For myself I am glad that I am perfectly recovered from the effects of my accident, and am as active as ever. I have passed a very pleasant winter, and have prosecuted my studies to great advantage, though there still remains, alas! more for me to do than I can hope to accomplish in the time that is still left for me. Your letter was just in time to reach me here; for we had just decided to go to Paris early next week; to remain there until the 1st of June, at least. The only drawback is that we thereby lose the society of Mr. and Mrs. Bentham, who mean to come to London early next month....

Sir William Hooker is not yet well, though better than he was last winter. I have presented your kind messages, for which he sends best thanks, and is rejoiced to hear of your recovery. Sir William is truly a noble man; the more intimately you know him the more strongly attached to him you become....

I had thought it quite likely that we might pass through Geneva again this summer; but that is not now possible. The sea, however, is not so broad as formerly. Believe me to remain,

Very faithfully and affectionately yours,
Asa Gray.

In April Dr. and Mrs. Gray went to Paris, where he worked busily through the mornings at the Jardin des Plantes, taking the afternoon for his sight-seeing. He met again his old friends, Jussieu, Decaisne, Gay, etc., and made the acquaintance of M. and Mme. Vilmorin, both most charming and interesting people; the former distinguished as a horticulturist, and both making investigations for many years on the varieties of strawberries, for which Mme. V. made all the drawings. Two separate days were passed at Verrières, their country home, an old villa belonging formerly to the Duchesse de la Vallière. And here to meet him came old Michaux[16] the younger, then eighty-one, who had walked from his home (fifteen leagues), for the pleasure of seeing Dr. Gray. And it was at Dr. Gray’s request that both Michaux and Jussieu sat for their daguerreotypes for him, the only satisfactory likenesses of either. Mr. François Delessert[17] extended pleasant hospitalities, and Mr. Webb was very kind and cordial.

It was during the time of the Republic, Louis Napoleon, president, and there were some grand fêtes in May, in honor of the Republic, at which the officers of the government were conspicuously absent.

Dr. Gray returned to Kew in June to continue his work, broken only by some days in London.

TO GEORGE BENTHAM.

Paris, April 30, 1851.

Dear Bentham,—I cannot give your message to Weddell, for he is on his way to the Peruvian cinchona forests, to remain a year,—I suppose on a commission from the manufacturers of quinine. Jussieu still suffers with some affection of the stomach, but is much better than last winter. Decaisne is quite well, but is occupied with the Culture, and is little in the herbarium, where Spach, Tulasne,[18] Naudin,[19] and Trécul[20] are in charge, under Brongniart and Jussieu. Webb is well, and so is Gay, who is quite happy, living on his half pay, which the Republic has secured to him, with his rooms free of rent, and some savings from his former income. I have not seen Gaudichaud yet; but he has offered to come and show me his Sandwich Island collections, etc., of which he has issued some plates, in “La Voyage de la Bonite,” but no text has appeared, and none seems likely to appear.

I gave to Dr. Alexander the list and notes on Fendler’s Chagres plants. He will hand it to you when he sees you in London.

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

Paris, May 6, 1851.

Robert Brown told me that Link would be succeeded in his excellent and lucrative professorship either by Grisebach[21] or by our excellent friend Braun. Since I have been here, a young man from Berlin says that the choice has fallen on Braun,—to my great joy, for I love Braun very much. I have given Lowell, who leaves Paris to-day, and will be in Germany in June and July, a letter to Braun, addressed to Giessen or Berlin.

Prince Paul’s sensitive branches of Mimosa catching unwary travelers is rich!

TO ——.

Wednesday morning, June 11.

Settled down to usual Kew routine; glad enough to get back to quiet and superlative neatness; to less elegance than our Parisian quarters, but decidedly more comfort. The only thing that distresses us is, that we cannot translate dear Mrs. Crook bodily to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Sure we would if she were younger; but the dear old creature will now erelong be translated to a far better land.... Unpacked (which in interminableness is only second to packing up) and went down to the Hookers’....

Friday, after writing and dispatching letters home, we went up to London, shopped, etc., in the City; streets nasty (the English word is very appropriate; no wonder they always use it), and such a contrast to beautiful and gay Paris, which is vastly more convenient and agreeable for shopping....

Saturday, ... a little stroll in the Gardens, which are looking beautifully, the trees loaded with rich foliage, and the great masses of Rhododendrons in blossom.

In the evening went with Dr. Hooker up to the last soirée of Lord Rosse, the president of the Royal Society; too late to see Prince Albert, who came and went early; saw the usual dons. Sir Charles Lyell asked if I had stayed abroad all the time since last year, or had just come over afresh!...

Wednesday, we were off early in the morning, to make our first visit to the Great Exhibition. We went up to town by railroad as usual; walked over Waterloo bridge, and having reached the Strand, had the satisfaction of seeing nine omnibuses pass westward, all full. Despairing of all hope of getting into an omnibus, we were just turning to look for a cab, when a well-dressed and respectable woman, who had been making similar unsuccessful attempts, rushed up to us, exclaiming, “Oh! are you going to the Exhibition? Will you not take a cab with me? I have been trying for an omnibus in vain this half hour, and I have made an appointment with some friends there at half past ten.” We agreed at once to this reasonable and very convenient proposition, and we shared the expense accordingly, with many expressions of thanks on the lady’s part. Before we had reached within half a mile of the Crystal Palace we were obliged to fall into dense line, with a close double file of cabs, carriages, dog-carts, and other “vehicular conveyances,” all wending their way thither, a similar file of empty carriages returning on the other side of the street; the sidewalks as well as the roads inside the park all crowded with pedestrians. Early as we were, a vast number of people were already there, but scattered through the vast interior, they scarcely made a crowd, until midday, when the more attractive parts of the structure, the principal streets and squares, so to say, were thronged.

As to what we saw, is it not written at length in the great Official Catalogue (as far as that ponderous document is yet published), besides the Abridged Catalogue, in itself quite a sizable book, which we mean to bring home, with the Synopsis, and other things, quite a library, and I dare say you have heard and read quite enough about it. I doubt whether you have seen the excellent and spirited articles in the “Times,” beginning long before the building was finished, which give a most admirable and lively account of everything.

The general impression of the interior was not quite so imposing, did not give such an idea of the vastness, as when we saw it in April, less full, and the long spaces unbroken.

On our way down the nave, we stopped for a moment to see the Koh-i-noor, but the Mountain of Light looked to us little brighter than a piece of cut-glass. It does not come up to the general expectation. Manage it as they will, it does not shine at all wonderfully, and the people got it into their heads that the authorities were shamming them with a glass imitation instead of the veritable Koh-i-noor; an idea well expressed in “Punch,” who called it “the knave of diamonds.” We determined to show our patriotism by going first of all carefully through the American department, and quite a trial to one’s patriotism it is, a great space, very scantily filled with an ill-assorted, incongruous collection (although they have given up to Russia and France about one quarter of the space that Mr. Lawrence asked for and insisted upon having): one long shelf displayed only half a dozen wooden pails; another side was decorated with a miserable collection of cast-off specimens of autumn-leaves, and below with a case containing five or six dozen bottles of prepared magnesia, all just alike, flanked at the sides with a similar collection of Old Jacob Townsend’s Sarsaparilla, surmounted by a portrait of the illustrious inventor. The strength of the nation has gone to daguerreotypes, of which there are about two thousand very good specimens of the art, it must be said, far better than they can produce in England. The same may be said of many things, creditable in themselves, but of which they have filled up their space, or attempted to fill it, with an enormous number of specimens, where one or two would suffice. But wherever anything is quite poor and commonplace, the exhibitor is sure to make it up in brag, in which it must be confessed we do “beat all creation.”

Monday we went to the Zoölogical Gardens, very extensive, in fine keeping, the richest collection of living animals of all sorts in the world. Were very much amused with monkeys of all sorts and sizes, from those little larger than a rat to the great and sedate orang-outang,[22] just arrived, who is quite a human and a very respectable grave old fellow. We saw the hippopotamus, too, but he lay sleeping in the sun, and would give no sign of life except occasionally opening his eye and giving a wink. But one of the most amusing sights was the little suckling elephant, with its mother, and it was curious to see the little thing use its trunk as perfectly and knowingly as its mother.... We stayed to see the ferocious animals fed, at half past four, no great sight, as they behaved extremely proper, and then we hurried back to the station and came home to Kew.

A short visit to the British Museum, which is an immense collection of objects of natural history, sculpture, books, antiquities, etc., etc. Had some botanical work in the herbarium there (the British Museum), but did not do anything that day, for we spent the time talking to Mr. Brown, who was in quite a chatty mood. He is a singular-looking man, with a very heavy lower lip and jaw, and generally carries his head down; but it is curious to watch him, and see how he kindles up, and what a satirical twinkle comes in the corner of his eyes when he tells some story, for he has a good deal of satire.

Dr. Gray went to the meeting of the British Association at Ipswich, where Prince Albert came for a few days. Dr. Hooker and Dr. Harvey (who had been making a visit at Kew), and other scientific friends, were there. Among other discussions in one of the sections was one on the possibility of a railroad to the Pacific, a paper by Asa Whitney, “which had been brought before the Geographical Society in London, and reported on favorably.”

From Ipswich he made a most interesting visit to Lady Hooker’s father, Dawson Turner, seeing his very valuable collections, autographs, pictures, etc., and returning to Kew to work until breaking up to go back to America. A short trip was made in Ireland, and Dr. Gray went to Pontrilas to say goodby to Mr. and Mrs. Bentham, immediately before the voyage. Dr. and Mrs. Gray were again at home, September 4.

After Dr. Gray’s return from Europe, his busy life went on, filled with college work and the care of the Garden as accompaniments to a study of the new collections constantly coming in, the work on the Exploring Expedition, the keeping his various botanical text-books in their new editions up with the advancing science, and his always large correspondence. His letters were chiefly on the questions upon which he was working, but with many touches on events of interest of the day, and little playful turns. He says in a letter to Dr. Engelmann, “I well know I have too many irons in the fire.”

Unfortunately, Mr. Darwin destroyed all the letters he received before 1862, except the one published in his “Life and Letters,” which is inserted later, as well as one to Sir Joseph Hooker taken from the same volume. The rest of those to Sir Joseph are mostly bound up in the botanical correspondence at Kew.

Dr. Gray was an immense worker. After his morning mail was received and looked over, that he might answer any imperative questions, he took daylight for his scientific work, and, with pauses for meals, and the necessary interruptions that came at times, he kept steadily on all the day. He wrote his letters and his elementary botanical works mostly in the evening. But in his younger days his eyes were unusually strong, and he would work with the microscope by lamp-light as readily as by daylight.

Though a steady and unwearying worker he was not rapid. He would throw aside sheet after sheet to be rewritten, especially if there was anything he wished to make particularly clear and strong, or any reasoning to be worked out from the soundest point of view. It was always a wonder to those about him that he could stand as he did the unceasing labor, but he was a sound sleeper even if the hours might be short, and of a vigorous, wiry, active temperament, and when he did take a holiday, he took it heartily. His rest and recreation were in journeys, longer or shorter, and every two or three years some long outing would be taken, to give him the needed refreshment. But he must always be busy even then, somewhere to go, something to see; rest in quiet seemed impossible to him for more than a day at a time.

TO CHARLES WRIGHT.

Cambridge, January 23, 1852.

I am printing on “Plantæ Wrightianæ,” the first part of which (as I work in so much general matter, especially Tex-Mexican), to the end of Compositæ, will take 225 pages or more, with ten plates,—the most important memoir I ever wrote, and will indelibly fix our name on the Texan-New-Mexican Flora....

I have just found a letter of Sullivant’s, dated May 27, 1850, in which he says, “Send me by all means Wright’s Texan Mosses and Hepaticæ....”

Poor fellow! as I wrote you before, he lost his wife while I was away, and was overwhelmed, as she was everything to him, and as good a muscologist almost as he....

You are in a fine field. Hold on and keep a good heart. I long to see what Colonel Graham is now bringing on to me....

June 5.

There, my dear Wright, I consider myself very much of a gentleman! For your favor of the 12th April reached me only this afternoon, and now before the sun has gone down I am answering it! Your letter came very opportunely too. For, though Colonel Graham has been back so long, it was only yesterday that I got the collection he brought home with him to Indianola (and the seeds); and to-day I opened it and had looked over only two bundles. And I was saying to myself, Now if I only had Mr. Wright’s list with localities, I should do very well. And when my letters came from the office, yours, with said list inclosed, was among them. The plants look well, but I have only peeped into them yet. I am glad if you have found Amoreuxia malvafolia, but I have not yet hit upon it....

I am still very busy with college work, for a month longer, and with the Garden; and the Exploring Expedition work has been pressing me, and still will. But I shall somehow distribute your 1851 collection very soon, name them up to the end of Compositæ, and in the course of the summer determine many of the monopetalous families. I have already named and described a few of these and some Apetalæ to please Colonel Graham, and named a new Pentstemon after him (which I have growing, too), which compliment seems to gratify him.

By this time you will have received the index and plates of “Plantæ Wrightianæ.” Copies are already in England, and I am about to dispatch many to France, Germany, etc.

You are indeed an invaluable collector, though you do like to grumble now and then, and I hope the Indians won’t catch you. If they must take a scalp or a head, there are others I could better spare. So take care of yourself....

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

February 23, 1852.

I carefully keep your flowering bit of Fendlera, ready to return it if Lindheimer does not get more, as I trust he will. It is the most interesting of North American genera, between Deutzia and Philadelphus, and shows plainly that both are saxifragaceous....

July 28.

I am worked almost to distraction. But college work is now over and I can get on with fewer irons in the fire.

I fear you are driven up hard also, by the sickly season and cholera. I hope you may be able to give up practice by and by....

I have had for a good while a misunderstanding with Captain Wilkes about my work for the Exploring Expedition botany. It is now made up, I think, or nearly, but I have had no pay from them for a long time, and they are a year behind in paying. I have got manuscript of several families all ready for the press, and some fine drawings. I am just now working up “Plantæ Wrightianæ,” 1851 collection, up to end of Compositæ, old stopping-place, but must dash beyond that soon....

TO W. J. HOOKER.

Cambridge, December 4, 1852.

Here is a discovery! I have to-day received by post from Dr. J. F. Beaumont, of Mountain Home, in the upper part of Alabama, specimens of a Trichomanes, which he finds growing there under shelving rocks. I send you herewith the half of what is sent me, knowing you will be much interested in the discovery, for the first time, of a Trichomanes in the United States; and thinking that you will probably pronounce it to be a form of the T. radicans, though so much smaller than my Irish and West Indian specimens.... I have not specimens enough of T. radicans to satisfy myself entirely, and refer the question to your experienced judgment. Pray give me your opinion, for the addition of a single species to our few ferns, and especially one of this group, is a matter of moment to us, and worthy of a published notice.

I should not be so greatly surprised now if Hymenophyllum ciliatum, credited by Willdenow to Virginia, should turn up, but I still think there was some mistake about that; and I could find no specimen in Willdenow’s herbarium when I sought for it, in 1839....

Next Wednesday’s steamer, which takes this letter, will also take, for a short European tour, my good father-in-law, Mr. Loring, with Mrs. Loring, and Mrs. Gray’s brother Charles. A rather sudden determination, but we have strongly urged the journey ever since the death of their dear little boy, the little Benjamin, who seemed given to be the comfort and stay of their declining years, who was born just before our return home, a year ago last summer. The rest and change are needful to Mr. Loring, also, from being worn down by his long-continued labors at the bar, of which he is perhaps the leader in Boston; I am confident it will be of great benefit to him; and the Old World has much to interest a man of his refined taste.... And then Kew Garden is to them one of the wonders of the world, as well as a place with which they have, through us, so many pleasant associations. Should you wish them to enjoy the privilege of seeing the Gardens under your own kind auspices, would you notify Mr. Loring through Boott (for I do not now know what will be their London address), of a day that would be agreeable and convenient to yourself....

January 4, 1853.

Wright will now soon be off in Ringgold’s North Pacific Surveying Expedition, to explore Behring Straits, Kurile Islands, the coast of Japan, if possible, and to winter at the Sandwich Islands.

So we shall have no more New Mexican plants from him.

My new memoir, “Plantæ Wrightianæ,” is now almost all printed, and contains many novelties. I never had a collection so rich in entirely new things.

I long to hear what you will say of the Trichomanes from Alabama which I sent you.

With best wishes for the new year to you and all yours, I remain,

Yours affectionately,
Asa Gray.

January 28, 1853.

“It never rains but it pours” is an old adage suitable to this meridian and illustrated by what I now send you, namely, a second Trichomanes from Alabama! discovered by the indefatigable Thomas M. Peters, Esq., of Moulton, who (and not Mr. Beaumont, it appears) was the first finder of Trichomanes radicans in Alabama.

This one seems to me clearly a new one....

I think it particularly appropriate in this case that it should bear the name of its discoverer, so I have called it Trichomanes Petersii, and have sent a little article on it and Trichomanes radicans to “Silliman’s Journal.” ...

In 1853 began Dr. Gray’s long correspondence with the Dean of St. Paul’s—a friendship whose intimacy was ever increasing and which lasted through his life.

TO R. W. CHURCH.

February 7, 1853.

My dear Mr. Church,—Since I heard, which I did first from Mr. Clough,[23] that you were about to marry and take charge of a parish, I have been longing every time I wrote to England to add a line expressing my most sincere congratulations. I hope you will not think me too presuming if I make bold to do so, and if I ask you where your parish is, for I would gladly form some idea of where your home is to be. Pleasant and desirable on many accounts as an Oxford life must be, yet I cannot but think you more appropriately placed in the pleasant parsonage I can fancy, the centre of a little world of your own, and the spiritual guide of an attached body of parishioners, where you will be very happy and very useful.

Still let us hope that the visit to Cambridge, New England, is only deferred, to afford us a double gratification. I think you can sometimes leave your parish for three months, or even more with special leave, and the voyage is becoming shorter and cheaper every year.

I have looked through the “Times,” which I see regularly through the kindness of a friend, thinking that I might perchance see your appointment, presentation, or whatever it may be, mentioned; but in vain.

By the way, I am glad to see that you have elected Mr. Gladstone. Your name on the Oxford Committee makes me suppose you have not yet left Oxford.

Dr. Albro has returned in restored health, and speaks with much gratification of his visit to Oxford, only regretting that your absence prevented his making your acquaintance until the last moment of his short stay.

Mr. Clough brought me a letter from Maskelyne of Wadham College. Circumstances, I am sorry to say, have yet prevented me from seeing him here as much as I could wish. I hope soon to know him better. He has excellent and influential acquaintances; but one hardly sees what he is to do.

If he holds Unitarian views, as I have been told, he will perhaps be more favorably situated, just in Boston or Cambridge, than in England, and probably meet more cultivated and more religious people of that persuasion than at home. But if he sympathizes rather with Francis Newman and that school, as some one tells me, I should think he would not find that class of people here very attractive to him. But I hope that is not his bent. I have no partiality for Unitarianism, though it is the faith of near and valued friends. I am an orthodox Presbyterian, as my fathers were. But in England I should be a Churchman, although a pretty low one, at least in some respects; and I am a most hearty well-wisher to the Church of England. So pray, when settled in your parish, just drop me a line to say where you are, and how old your parish church is; for hankering after antiquities is, as an Oxford man told me, a great failing of Americans.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

Cambridge, March 28, 1853.

My dear Friend,—I am all the more glad that I can direct your attention to the fourth volume (new series) of the “Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,” p. 382, where you will find your name enrolled as the sole Honorary Member for Switzerland.

Ordinarily neither you nor I would be at all solicitous for such recognition. I care not to have them except where (as in the Linnæan Society of London, the French Academy, and your own society of Geneva) I well know the nominations are strictly and conscientiously weighed, and where the list to be filled is a limited one. But we here prize the name of De Candolle so highly that we count it a privilege to have it on our foreign list....

I should state that this academy, the oldest but one in America, was in a state of inactivity and hebetude since the death of its former president, Bowditch, till 1843, the year after I came to Cambridge, when it was determined, chiefly by some of my colleagues in Cambridge, to restore it to life and vigor. It is now full of life. The number of its foreign members is now limited to seventy-five, and they are chosen by a very formal process and a very rigid scrutiny, so as to have only the very best names in the several departments of knowledge. Formerly they were chosen without such care; so that there are names on the list that could not be placed there now. Hereafter the list will be a most select one....

Hereafter we will send our parcels through the Smithsonian Institution and through its agent, Mr. Hector Bossange, Paris. You justly praise the publications of this institution. It is on the point of issuing another splendid volume; and at least one a year will continue to be issued.[24]

Liberal in its distribution, the Smithsonian Institution looks to its exchanges as a means of building up a library valuable for scientific researches in this country. You may remember that, when at Geneva, I ventured to ask you to recommend to the Société de Physique et d’Histoire Naturelle de Genève, to vote its series of memoirs to the Smithsonian Institution. But you thought it would not then be quite proper to request it. Now that the institution has given such evidences of its vigor and productiveness, and that I can assure you it is only beginning to do its work, and that in number of volumes it will soon overtake you, I venture to renew the request which I was then requested to make; and I think that your society, with these assurances, and in view of the good offices of the Smithsonian in promoting interchanges (at no small expense), would freely accord the earlier volumes of its memoirs, on your proposition....

Dr. Harris[25] has made interesting researches on the plants cultivated by our aborigines, which I urge him to publish; but he is one of those persons who are never quite ready to print as long as they live.

I have long suspected that Helianthus tuberosus came from North America. I should like to study from what indigenous species it comes....

As to the “Botany of the South Sea Exploring Expedition,” the manuscript and the drawings are ready up nearly to the Leguminosæ; and the printing, which is not under my control, is about to commence. The work will probably make three quarto volumes and 300 folio plates. I shall be sure to have a copy to send you. As to the specimens, there are few duplicates; and of these I am not myself allowed to retain any. Possibly, hereafter, some may be awarded to me. That expedition did not land on the high Antarctic coasts it saw, and therefore made no collections there. Its Antarctic collection is all from Orange Harbor, Tierra del Fuego, and has little that is new.

The most interesting part of the collection was made at the Sandwich and Feejee islands.

My wife and I well remember what a charming place Vallon is, and retain pleasant memories of our trip to the Salève under the charge of Madame De Candolle, despite the bad weather which spoiled the view. We should delight to revisit Switzerland. Having no children, it is not impossible that we may do so; but the time, I fear, is far in the future....

I have written a much longer letter than I had intended when I began.

Believe me to remain, yours very faithfully,

Asa Gray.

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

Cambridge, July 14, 1853.

My dear Engelmann,—This cover has been addressed to you for a long while, but I have delayed to fill and close it, not so much because you had not written, for I knew you must be very busy now, but because the convenient time has not exactly come. For I have been very busy. College work done up only last week; printing of “Exploring Expedition Botany,” in which I have read proofs up to 220 pages, and gave to-night finished manuscript (except a few crooked points to settle in a family or two) up to the end of Rosaceæ (which will make about 450 pages. It fills up fast with the open pages adopted in these reports). I shall carry on the volume to 550 or 650 pages, and the plates folio, already 56, shall carry up to 100, if I can. There is next some tough work in Myrtaceæ and Melastomaceæ; but as to the latter Naudin has much cleared the way. Those done, and I think I may venture to work part of the time on the Lindheimer, Fendler, and Wright Monopetalæ.

Agassiz returned most delighted with his visit to you, and we talked much of you....

I am afraid to touch Gregg’s Mexican plants, for fear of the time they would consume. In “Exploring Expedition,” I branch out little or none, except a few notes in Malvaceæ, and probably more in Compositæ.

If I could do the work abroad, I could work up collateral things most advantageously; but the means here at disposal are too poor.

Still, you will be pleased with my volume i. when I finish and send it to you (the letterpress this fall!).

No specimens scarcely of Cactaceæ in collection Exploring Expedition,—a drawing or two. I shall send them on to you presently....

I grieve to tell you that Adrien de Jussieu is dead. Cancer in the stomach, his tedious malady proves to have been. It makes a deep impression on the scientific men, and the public, too, in Paris. He was much my most intimate correspondent in France, a true friend, and a charming man.

You know, perhaps, that Moquin-Tandon has succeeded the late Achille Richard at L’Ecole de Médecine. Tulasne, I suppose, will be the new professor at the Jardin des Plantes; at least he ought to be, as he is the most able man.

No farther news since my last.

Agassiz looks poorly and says he is not well....

I never could get Fouquiera up. To-day I have sown some seeds, and put on my own table, by the window, to watch....

18th August.

Agassiz handed me your note about the Compass plant. I took him at once into the Garden, to see Silphium laciniatum, terebinthinaceum, and pinnatifidum.

He agreed there was no direction to be made out, one way more than another. The cauline leaves all tend to become vertical (as in several other Compositæ), but present neither face nor edge north.

But three years ago Lapham of Wisconsin wrote me that, though the plant near Milwaukee showed no “polarity” (and so he never believed in it), yet on going farther west, on the prairies, he found it did generally turn all to the north there.

If I remember aright, though, he said the surfaces of the leaf look north and south. You say the edges? How is this? Compare notes with Lapham....

What do you think I am about now? Revising genera of Myrtaceæ for Exploring Expedition collection.

In these exotic orders I frequently find the genera so at loose ends that I cannot make the plants of our collection lie comfortably till I have given the genera a good shaking up. I should be tempted to do much more of this if I could work at Hooker’s, or in Paris. It is quite as well not, as it would cost no end of time....

I have found some Fouquiera seedlings up in the Garden. I am right about it; not Torrey. The leaf is not axillary and its petiole inclosed in the spine; but the spine is a hardened inferior portion of the petiole that persists, and from which the rest falls away clean....

TO W. J. HOOKER.

Cambridge, August 3, 1853.

My dear Sir William,—I will endeavor to get some account of Shakerdom for you. They are a queer people indeed.

Manilla paper[26] is made of old manilla rope, which is largely used by our shipping. But what plant yields the manilla hemp for this cordage I have not the means of knowing, that is, whether the Musa textilis or no. I have been promised specimens of the stem of the plant, etc. But the climate makes our countrymen indolent there, and forgetful. I will ask for statistics as to the paper manufacture....

I shall be pleased to have you figure as many of our ferns as you can; and pray give names to all new species without hesitation. They will be more fitly named by the describer than by any one else.

I note with satisfaction what you write about genera of ferns. This pushing a single character (as venation) without regard to consequences, and giving it the same importance when it does not accord with habit as when it does, is the fault of most botanologists who restrict their view to one subject or one idea only. I am glad that you will carefully revise the genera on your own judgment.

By the way, the fern I sent you last spring, and which you called Asplenium montanum, Willd. (a species I used to know well), struck the collector (Beaumont), as it did me, to be different. Pray collate, and perhaps figure it, as well as the ordinary A. montanum.

I was grieved to hear of the death of Adr. de Jussieu, with whom I have had a very pleasant correspondence for the last three years, and to whom I was attached as to no other Frenchman. His late letters were so cheerful and lively, and even hopeful, that the news of his death took me by surprise, notwithstanding the steady failure of his health for a long while....

We remember with interest that dear Harvey sets out to-morrow on his long voyage.

TO R. W. CHURCH.

Christmas Eve, 1853.

My dear Mr. Church,—It is a good time to remember old friends and to bring up, as well as one may, arrears of neglected duty. I have long unaccountably neglected to acknowledge your letter of the 24th August, and to thank you most heartily for the interesting volume of your collected reviews, which reached me a little earlier (I know not how it was so long delayed between New York and Cambridge), and which I have received and read with much pleasure, that is, all I have yet read. For I am saving the article on Dante for my first leisure hour. The first I read was the article on Pascal and Ultramontanism, of which I greatly admire the delicate and thorough handling.

I wish I could send you something of any interest. But I am not well enough satisfied with the elementary work which I use as a text-book for my lower classes to offer it; and besides that I have published, since last in England, only memoirs of the botany of our new western regions, one volume of the botany of a Government South Sea Expedition, etc., all dreadfully dry and technical.

I have been unusually busy this year, and am just now especially so, having to complete the preparation of nine lectures on Vegetation, which I am to give before the Smithsonian Institution at Washington next month.

I do not much fancy popular lecturing, and do this only to please a very valued friend, Professor Henry, the secretary of this institution. This over, I shall return to my regular plodding work at home, with great satisfaction.

I do not wonder that you feel a little nervous about the result of the experiment at Oxford. I can well understand it, and if I were an Oxford man, which I should count it a high honor to have been, I should share the feeling. I count it an excellent thing that the new enactments were framed by friendly hands, and are not very sweeping. As far as I can judge from the election of the present council, those of the Movement party by no means have it all their own way.

It seems to me that the admission of Dissenters to the A. B. degree is a wise measure, and one that will do no harm to the university nor the church. But I see not how they can go further. It would not be right that they should pass to the A. M. and share in the government of the university.

Any position at Oxford or Cambridge which allows of matrimony must be a desirable one for a person of scholarly pursuits. I can hardly think you will pass your life at Whatley, but trust you will have some better preferment and a wider field of duty before long, before Mrs. Gray and myself will be likely to pay you the visit you kindly solicit, for I see no near prospect of our revisiting England, though nothing would please us more....

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

7th December, 1853.

I got dreadfully behindhand with everything. “Exploring Expedition Botany” stopped printing for a long time, but is now renewed; three hundred or more pages are printed, and copy sent to printer up to Leguminosæ (excl.). Meanwhile, to look over Brackenridge’s manuscript of the Filices, to turn a loose ungrammatical lingo into English, and his English characters into Latin, is a tedious job; then to read his proofs is another. But if I did not do all this, very bad work indeed would be made of it. Late in October Mrs. Gray and I went to New York for a week, to visit Torrey and to see the New York Exhibition. Returning, I had to bear my part in a course of lectures, which the American Academy gave to the public (to replenish our publication funds); and to prepare and deliver my two lectures, on the relations of plants to the sun, cost me almost the whole of November.

Sprague is too slow, and too feeble in health, to do half what I want done, let alone others. I must import an additional draughtsman. If you know any in Germany good enough, who would come out, let me know at once. If not, I must try at Paris....

TO CHARLES WRIGHT.

May 21, 1853.

The Kurile Islands will be a fine field; and I hope you can do much among them. Collect some specimens of everything you see there....

Cambridge, February 19, 1854.

Sinner that I am, I have four letters of yours unanswered; the last from Simon’s Bay, November 4th. The fact is I do not find time to write half the letters I ought, and those, like yours, which are not to be dispatched on some particular day, I am sure to postpone and neglect interminably. It seems so vague, too, to be writing to a man, you know not where, somewhere on the other side of the world, and you know not when the epistle may reach him, say six months hence.

Nor is it easy to reflect and remember what I have been doing, so as to tell you....

I forgot to tell you, too, that Thurber[27] called on me and offered his plants collected under Bartlett. I have written out the greater part up to the end of Compositæ, my old sticking-place, a number of new things, mostly from deeper down in Sonora than you went, and in southwest California. Beyond doubt Torrey will work up a part. I shall merely furnish characters and botanical remarks to Thurber, and let him do all the rest of the talk. Bartlett is still in hopes that the Senate will print a great report for him. I greatly doubt if they do. If so, Thurber’s botany will go as an appendix. If not, he will make a memoir of the things up to Compositæ, and the striking things beyond, and afterwards I may lick up the rest in the general continuation of “Plantæ Wrightianæ,” etc.

Meanwhile the United States minister at Mexico has been making a treaty, now before our Senate, for buying a further slice of Chihuahua and Sonora, to take in Lake Guzman and the Sonora country some way south of where you went, that is, below San Pedro. So there will have to be a new survey if this treaty is ratified, and a chance of more botany. I wish you were to be here to attend to it; only you have already taken off the cream of that country, and can now do more, and find more novelty, in some of the countries you are going to.

From Governor Stevens’s party, from Minnesota to Washington Territory, north of Oregon, bundles of plants are sent home to Baird and by him forwarded to me. Wretched specimens, and nothing new among them!...

Captains at sea are very apt to get a little crusty, which should be minded just as little as possible. I expect to hear that, after getting well settled and at home in the Vincennes, you find yourself comfortable and all pleasant. Gentlemanly conduct and devotion to one’s pursuits will at length make one respected, anywhere.

When you return, I trust you will yourself prepare the botanical report of your cruise. I hope so, for your own sake, both scientifically and because your doing so will keep you on pay some years longer on shore. I will aid you, if I live, most willingly over knotty points, etc.; perhaps would like to do certain families further than that; not, if you will take hold of it yourself, as you ought to do.

I suppose you will have found nothing new at the Cape, though the vegetation there must have been novel to you. It will be pleasant, in the long cruises, to study yourself the plants collected at the last port. Did you get any nice Algæ? Look out for them hereafter.

When you are on surveying-ground, you may probably be transferred back to the steamer again.

Presently your letters will be coming to me via California. I hope to continue to hear such good accounts of your health and activity. Do not measure my interest in your letters by the number I myself write, though I mean to write oftener in future. No news here, scientific or other. Mr. Carey, you know, has gone back to England to live, and has married a young wife there, moreover.

TO W. J. HOOKER.

Cambridge, March 28, 1854.

I send a glass bottle filled with the pulp and seed of Cereus giganteus as gathered by the natives, and used for food, the same as what I formerly sent you a small quantity of in a letter, trusting the seeds would grow, as they are not subjected to heat in making this jam.

I have some pieces of the wood of the great Wellingtonia tree, which I estimate to be not older probably than the Christian era. Torrey has no fruit, nor have I; but there are some cones in Philadelphia. The wood is very like that of the red-wood, i. e., Taxodium sempervirens. I hope we shall get the male flowers, but I have no correspondent in California, and Torrey no very good or energetic ones.

How hard it is to believe that there is a European war! I trust it will be short. Some of our own people are behaving very badly about Cuba, but it is mostly talk for effect, and will lead to nothing, we hope.

TO GEORGE THURBER.

Cambridge, 20th April, 1854.

Dear Thurber,—When yours of the 17th arrived, and till now, I have been too much absorbed in college duties to consider it, as I now rapidly will.

Ranunculus 441. I never liked naming a plant after a person who has had nothing to do with it, as collector, describer, and nothing else; therefore do not like R. Huntiana. We will wait for some other mode of complimenting Mr. Hunt. Moreover, I have hit on a name which pleases me tolerably, viz., R. hydrocharoides, which, by your leave, we will adopt.

Thurberia specific name? That is a question to consider, and no very pat name at once applicable both to the species and the discoverer occurs to me.

“Thurberia palmata” might pass, and would anglicize into “the handy Thurber,” but then the hand has only three fingers.

“T. tridactyla” would meet this; but only birds are tridactylous; besides, the uppermost leaves are entire.

Taking another tack, from its smoothness, we might say, T. glabra or T. lævis; or, as I believe you have not a strong beard, T. imberbis. But, on the whole, perhaps it would be as well to indicate merely the nearest affinity of the genus, and call it “Thurberia thespesioides,” as it is nearest Thespesia. Take your choice, though, of any of the above, to which add “T. rosea,” if the color of the flower warrants that name.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

Cambridge, June 1, 1854.

My dear Friend,—It was with great pleasure that I received from you, two days ago, your letter of the 2d May. I counted myself your debtor, although, indeed, my last letter of 18th October is of later date than yours of the 1st October, which it crossed on the ocean, and I was only waiting until I could announce a small envoi to you, namely, that of a copy of the 1st volume of the “Botany of the United States Exploring Expedition in the South Seas,” which has been more than a year in printing. This 4th volume (777 pages) is at length happily printed off, and just in time, too, for sending you a copy (unbound, direct from the printing-office at Philadelphia) in the annual envoi of the Smithsonian Institution.

The atlas, of 100 plates in folio, which should accompany this volume, is by no means ready, owing to the slowness as well as the feeble health of the artist, Mr. Sprague; perhaps, even, it may not reach you before next year, by the same mode of conveyance.

I have now, indeed, some hopes that the “Flora of North America” may soon be carried through the Gamopetalæ, I elaborating at the same time, in a general memoir, the Gamopetalæ of Wright’s, Fendler’s, and Lindheimer’s collections in continuation; a pretty formidable matter!

In a separate small parcel you will find (in the Smithsonian envoi) some brochures for you.... Among them is a short article in “Silliman’s Journal,” accompanying a reprint of a great part of Dr. Hooker’s Introductory Essay to the “Flora of New Zealand.” Agassiz here is committed to the view opposite to Hooker’s, in an equally extreme form. I wished to interpose some criticisms to both views, but had only time to touch briefly on one or two points. I wait with impatience for your work on “Géographie Botanique,” expecting very much from it, from your great ability, long study of the subject, and fairness of mind. Indeed, I was daily expecting to learn that it was published; and now you tell me that the printing is barely begun; the “Prodromus,” volume 14, not yet begun! But I am one of the last persons who ought to complain of delay in execution....

From the family of the late M. de Jussieu, you should receive a copy of the “Epistolæ Linnæano-Jussieuanæ,” with our late friend’s notes, etc., the last scientific work of his too short life.[28] I intended to send you a copy myself, but at the request of M. Ramond I surrendered the small extra edition to his charge for distribution. In due time you will have a copy in the volume of the “Memoirs of the American Academy” also. My daguerreotype of M. Jussieu was most opportunely taken. His family, having no recent portrait, have solicited the loan of it, to aid in the preparation of an engraved likeness; and I have placed it in their hands.

I delayed the last sheet of the “Correspondence” long, awaiting an answer to my request for some materials (notices, éloges, etc.), from which I could prepare something of a biographical nature to append, but I received nothing, at least until too late. In the May number of the “Kew Journal of Botany,” Hooker has reprinted my brief note; but by some accident, the marks of quotation are omitted from the two last paragraphs, which appear as if written by the editor of the “Journal.” ...

Believe me to remain, my dear friend and honored colleague, as ever, your sincerely attached,

Asa Gray.

TO W. J. HOOKER.

Cambridge, February 5, 1855.

My dear Sir William,—The inclosed, from our good friend Dr. Short,[29] and the box it advises, came while I was at Washington, from which I have just returned. Mrs. Gray and I have enjoyed our month’s holiday very much; though I was kept busy enough, having to deliver nine lectures in three weeks. We had arranged to have a few days at New York, in which I could work with Dr. Torrey; but the good man was called off to Washington on business just as I left that place, and we crossed en route, and I came on home, in consequence....

I am very glad Mr. Smith was pleased with the live plants I sent. Please remind him that I should like to share in the distribution of seeds this spring. And if I find time to make out a short list, I may ask for some live plants again....

I have a Cereus giganteus six inches high, and I saw several others. They have no hair, and appear very unlike C. senilis....

There is an authentic account in some numbers of “Silliman’s Journal” last year of the size of that prostrate trunk (Wellingtonia-Washingtonia).

Mr. Blake, at Washington, told me something of it, but I forget the numbers. I will ask him, as he is a reliable person. But 450 feet is rather too tall.

So they would talk about the tree that was felled being 3,000 years old (and took in Lindley), whereas it was not quite 1,300! It appears to grow much faster than S. sempervirens.[30] ...

A great loss in Forbes’s death. I have been trembling lest I should hear that Dr. Hooker is chosen to the chair at Edinburgh, which would give him very good pay, I suppose, and he would fill the place well, but it would take him away from special botany, which would be a great pity....

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

May 29, 1855.

The class which leaves college this summer have bespoken photographic likenesses, on paper, of their professors,—my colleagues and myself,—and this gives me an opportunity of obtaining from the artist some duplicate copies of that for which I sat, and which Mrs. Gray pronounces a very good likeness.

It is not so much vanity that induces me to ask you to accept of the copy I inclose, as the hope of getting yours in return, if that same style be adopted in Geneva, and be as little expensive as here,—to add to the already considerable number of portraits of botanists which make the chief adornment of my rooms,—among which the fine engraving of your distinguished father is conspicuous. I need not say that I should be glad to place the likeness of the son near to that of the father. Ever, my dear De Candolle,

Your sincere and faithful,
Asa Gray.

TO CHARLES WRIGHT.

August 28, 1855.

For a long while now I have been waiting for a good evening when I was not too tired to write you a long letter to meet you in California, in return, though a poor return, for your several nice letters from China.

It is now time my letter was off,—when lo and behold!—

Yesterday morning I was sitting here busy with steady work and not expecting much interruption; now, this evening, my passage is taken, my trunk packed, I am hurriedly closing up affairs, and to-morrow morning go on board steamer America and sail for Liverpool. I have to go and look after my brother-in-law, who is sick in Paris of a fever. No one of the family can go but me, and I manage to find the time. Mr. Loring pays the traveling charges, and off I go, to be gone, however, not over two months, perhaps not so long; a week in Paris, another at Kew, a few days more in England; this must repay me (besides the consciousness of having done my duty) for some twenty odd days of discomfort at sea!

What have I been doing of late? Not much accomplished, i. e., published. Of my “Plantæ Novæ Thurberianæ” and “Notes on Vavæa and Rhytidandra” I have sent you copies already, but I will send you more.

A useful article on the Smithsonian Institution, in July number of “Silliman,” probably you have seen in the “Journal;” never mind, I send you a separate copy by mail. Some critical notices which I have no copies of.

What I am about doing, I can always talk largely of. I am preparing a new edition of the “Manual of Botany of the Northern United States,” and a new elementary work[31] of a familiar character, to go with it, separate and with original pictures on wood by Sprague, and I am to finish the “Flora” volume and “Plantæ Wrightianæ” with it. I have determined Berlandier’s plants up to end of Compositæ. Also I have done, along with Torrey, the botany of several expeditions across the continent for railroad surveys, which are soon to be published. Work goes slowly and I grow old. This little holiday will not be a bad thing for me, though it puts me back a little.

TO W. J. HOOKER.

Cambridge, October 23, 1855.

Now that I am quietly settled at home again, my episode seems almost like a dream,—a very pleasant one, however, since it gave me the pleasure of seeing once more some most valued and near friends. I was absent only six weeks and one day, of which twenty-two days were passed upon the water.

I found all well here on my return, but I was deeply grieved to learn the news of our beloved friend Dr. Torrey’s bereavement. It was about a month ago that the companion of his life, almost from his youth, was removed to a better world, after an illness of only a few days.... She was one of the most actively good, self-denying persons I ever knew. There are many to mourn at her departure out of her own family, especially among the poor and the distressed.... She was one of my earliest and best friends, one to whom I owe more than to almost any person; and I feel the loss as I should that of a near and dear relative.

I wrote you a line, with some inclosures, while at sea, and posted it at Halifax, N. S....

When I send the package from Holton,[32] I wish also to send you live seedlings of a palm from Sonora, Mexico, raised from seeds gathered by Thurber, and one or two other things.

I do not forget the large “cypress knees” I promised, which will be rather striking in your famous museum, and I look out for an opportunity to send by sailing vessel direct to London.

Remember me affectionately to Lady Hooker (for whom Mrs. Gray incloses a few lines) and most cordially to Mr. Bentham, who so kindly came down from the country to give me the opportunity of seeing him, for which I am greatly obliged.

P. S.—I forgot to tell you that, by the hands of Hon. Miss Murray (who returns to England by this week’s steamer), I send you the September number of “Silliman’s Journal.” Should she forget to send it to you, please remind her when she comes to Kew, as assuredly she will, to talk about her Florida new fern. I have filled up the Ward case which she brought over, also a box of American plants which she takes, I suppose, for Mr. Fox Strangways. Her various boxes and packages will nearly fill the ship, I should think.

Miss Murray is a most lively, most active person, has traveled widely through the country, and traversed rough places, such as no other woman past sixty ever did. She has seen a great deal, but heard very little, I should think, as she talks incessantly, and in a lively, interesting way, too.

You will not be disappointed by the suppression of her manuscript by her English friends, I suppose, for she is fully determined to rush into print, to print her journal just as it was written from day to day; for she now feels she has a mission to rescue the South from the obloquy and wrong heaped upon it by us of the North, and by England. Save the mark!

At any rate, her journal will be piquant.

I am anxious to know how far we can economically use the post for the transmission of printed matter. Perhaps I could safely send you “Silliman’s Journal” in this way. As an experiment I now send you our University catalogue. No, it will not do, I see, for anything weighing over two ounces or three. Beyond this the rates increase woefully....

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

18th October, 1855.

Yours of August 30th (answered by my wife) was written when I was one day at sea. Yours of October 13, which arrived to-day, was written two days after I reached home again. I had two very pleasant voyages, on the whole, and not long, ten and a half and eleven and a half days; eleven days in Paris (where I was detained a little by a severe cold on my lungs) and a week in England, mostly at London and Kew. I found my brother-in-law so convalescent that I might have stayed at home, and I brought him home with me in good condition. We had hoped, till the last moment, to get places in the steamer of the 13th October, and to have had a fortnight more in England. But all the places had been engaged for months, and nobody was giving up berths up to the time we sailed; so we had to come in steamer of the 29th ult., where we got a good stateroom by great luck, though the vessel was greatly crowded. Dr. Joseph D. Hooker (whom I had wanted to see for some time) being away in Germany, and time being extremely valuable to me here, I was on the whole very glad to get home. The naturalists at Paris were en vacance, and mostly away. I saw only Brongniart, Spach, Gay, Dr. Montagne, and Trécul (who sent, I believe, some pamphlets for you; the package is not yet unpacked), and my good friend Vilmorin. Boissier was there from Geneva.

In England I spent all the little time I could command at dear Hooker’s at Kew; and Bentham, then in the country, came down to see me. I made a long and interesting call on Robert Brown, who is very old, but full of interest. I shall not again see this Nestor of botanists, as well as facile princeps, in this world.

Hooker was much delighted when I told him you were coming next spring to see him at Kew. He insisted upon taking me over to see the Cactus house, and all through it, so that I might tell you what a mass of Cacteæ there are there; and he will be much pleased to have you work among them. He spoke about his Cuscuteæ, but was not at all displeased at your retaining them; begged you would work them up if possible before returning them. You will be charmed with Sir William when you see him.

As to the “Manual,” my plan, as at present advised, is to cross the line of slavery a little, to take in Kentucky and Virginia; this makes the real division, in botanical geography, between North and South. It should be Northern ground, too, down to this line: for north of it slave labor is good for nothing; and there would be no slaves there, except for the Southern market. I cannot take in Missouri, for I must make the Mississippi my boundary. But all your St. Louis plants cross into Illinois, do they not? Tell me how this is. I shall get at work at the new edition soon. I shall first press on the “Lessons” a little further.

About Fouquiera; I have examined it here repeatedly on the live plant, which every year prolongs its main axis an inch or two. And I took leaves to Providence to show there, especially to remove any lingering doubt on Torrey’s mind. For Torrey would long have it that the spine was a primary leaf, and that an axillary leaf adhered to it by its petiole. He now knows better.

I just saw Agassiz. He looks well and strong....

I read Alphonse De Candolle’s “Géographie Botanique Raisonnée” on the voyage home: a most able work it is, full of interesting matter very methodically arranged. Hooker and Thomson’s “Flora Indica,” vol. i., is famous for its able introductory essay, etc.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

October 27, 1855.

Your welcome letter of the 7th of August duly reached me. I meant to have surprised you by an answer dated at Paris; but the eleven days I passed there were too busily occupied to allow it. M. Boissier will have told you of my sudden voyage, and the cause of it. I was absent from home only six weeks and a day; and twenty-two days of the forty-three were passed on the water. On returning home I found here:

1. The excellent lithographed portrait of yourself, a pleasing and pretty good likeness. Of the three copies I have offered one to Torrey, the other to Short.

2. The copy of “Géographie Botanique,” which you so kindly addressed to me. (I have already learned that Agassiz and Darlington have theirs; but Torrey not his, and I have directed inquiries to be made.) This was not my first introduction to the book; for I bought a copy of Masson in Paris, to read on the voyage, when I could have more leisure than at home. And I carefully read it then (after having dispatched Hooker and Thomson’s “Flora Indica”) up as far as to p. 1087, when I was obliged by the close of the voyage to break off, at a very interesting point; and I cannot yet resume the reading.

I cannot sufficiently express my profound admiration of this book, so thorough and conscientious, so capital in its method, and embodying such a vast amount of facts well discussed; it might well be the work of a long life. I have marked in many places points on which I may have a word to say, sometimes little details to add or correct, sometimes a criticism to hazard.

If time (which is now precious to me) permit, I will write a series of articles on it for “Silliman’s Journal,” which will serve to make the work generally known to our people, and in which I can insert any commentaries I have time and room for. One article I will devote to plants introduced into this country from Europe. Now that you have so well collected and digested the principal information, it will be easy to complete and correct some points; and this may be useful to you hereafter, as well as to me....

I will procure from Dr. Harris any information he has collected about the potato, which, if Raleigh took it from Virginia to England, must have been brought to Virginia from South America. It was certainly unknown to our aborigines, who, however, along with maize, cultivated beans (Phaseoli) and squashes (Cucurbitæ).

Dr. Hooker had written to me, eulogizing your work in the highest terms. I missed seeing him when in England.

Agassiz speaks most highly of it; but I think he has only looked rapidly through its pages as yet....

I am at this moment preparing to begin the printing of the 2d edition of my “Manual of the Botany of the Northern States.” ...

In consequence of your book, I shall take pains to classify the introduced plants, according to the degree of naturalization, etc.

Many thanks for sending me your portrait. I am already quite rich in the likenesses of botanists, many of which adorn the walls of my apartments....

Believe me to remain, my dear friend, yours very faithfully and truly,

Asa Gray.

TO W. J. HOOKER.

Cambridge, February 25, 1856.

My dear Sir William,—Holton is bringing out a book upon New Granada which will be interesting....

The cypress knee sent was the best and handsomest I had, though not the largest. I am glad it pleases you. But you mistook what I said, or meant to say, which was, that tucked away in the hollow you would find placed a specimen of a forming knee, not much bigger than your knuckle, on a piece of root a foot or so long. Was this overlooked or lost? Please tell me; for I can replace it with another, and physiologically it would be well to show the formation in its various stages....

I want to send you a book by a young friend of ours, Olmsted, on the seaboard slave States,[33] an admirable volume, full of information, and lively withal. I wait for an opportunity. Lady Hooker will be interested in it. Our united warm regards to her.

Thanks to the Duke for anything to facilitate transmission of printed matter. But it is still high; for example, your “Journal,” which I get by post, costs 6d. each number, paid in London, and about 1d. more paid here. There is still room for improvement. I dare not send you “Silliman’s Journal” yet by post.

June 30, 1856.

Charles Wright, who was in the North Pacific Expedition under Ringgold and Rogers, has left his ship at California instead of making the voyage round Cape Horn, and crossed over the Nicaragua route, intending to botanize there some months. Finding himself there among our vile filibustering people, and all in confusion, however, he was soon obliged to come on home. He is awaiting the arrival of his ship, and will not till this autumn be able to touch his Pacific collections, of which the best and principal were made in Hongkong, Bonin, and the Loo Choo Islands and Japan. That they are not larger is not his fault.