Botanists -- United States -- Correspondence; Gray, Asa, 1810-1888 -- Correspondence
It was prepared to print long ago; is not your fault that it has been
delayed so long. The library committee have a right to print it, and
might do so without your corrections if you decline to make any. We want
the plates, which are now thrown away, and must be published. I would
print in the form of a naked list,--except where remarks and
descriptions are still wanted,--and to make all right and sure, and to
relieve you, I, with Watson’s kind help, will fix it all up for you and
read the proofs once, and so save you the worry. And I urgently request
you to send this line to Professor Henry, as embodying my opinion, and
my offer of help.
I am sure that if the rest of my manuscript is called for, I shall turn
it over with satisfaction, though the same applies to it as to yours.
And I should either alter accordingly or add notes.
The rest of your letter I will respond to in due time.
But I feel concerned to have those Oregon plates out.
I think I have some right to, as I paid for one hundred of them; but
that is no matter. They are now neither published nor unpublished, which
is a bad state of things.
* * * * *
Dr. Gray had the manuscript prepared some years before for the second
volume of the “United States Exploring Expedition,” and notified the
library committee that he was ready for publishing. Meantime came the
war, and there was no money or thought for such things. When the country
was again quiet and prosperous, the library committee who had formerly
known and been interested in the work and its printing had passed away;
there was no one to care for it, and the manuscript was never called
for.
TO CHARLES DARWIN.
CAMBRIDGE, March 7, 1872.
Mr. Packard, one of our best entomologists, a most excellent and modest
man, has asked to be introduced to you, that he may pay his respects.
I shy or refuse such applications generally, saying you can rarely see
visitors or callers. But Packard is “fish to your net,” has his head
crammed with facts bearing on derivation, is a disciple of the
Hyatt-Cope school, that you may have heard of,--people who have got hold
of what they call a law, though I do not see that they contribute any
vera causa at all.
If you will turn the world of science upside down, you must expect that
people will wish to see you....
May 31.
By the hand of an old correspondent of yours, and cousin of ours, Mr.
Brace, I send you a little book, which may amuse you, in seeing your own
science adapted to juvenile minds.[90] In some of those hours in which
you can do no better than read, or hear read, “trashy novels,” you might
try this instead. It will hardly rival “The Jumping Frog,” and the like
specimens of American literature which you first made known to us....
TO A. DE CANDOLLE.
BOTANIC GARDEN, June 10, 1872.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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