Botanists -- United States -- Correspondence; Gray, Asa, 1810-1888 -- Correspondence
... The gratification I feel in learning (by yours of the 3d) that you
are pleased must, I am sure, exceed any satisfaction of yours in regard
to my subdued and quiet article in “Nature.”[94] Lockyer, to my great
surprise, applied to me for it, and of course I could not refuse. I
think it will generally be regarded by scientific people as just and
moderate.
Odd that you should not have recognized my hand from the first in the
“Insectivorous Plants,” written, in fact, to vindicate your rights. The
papers called forth a second hoax, as elaborate as the first, and much
better done. I have no idea who wrote them.
You must, meanwhile, have received the article in the “Nation,”
reviewing Dr. Hodge’s “What is Darwinism?” You see what uphill work I
have in making a theist of you, “of good and respectable standing.”
Do hurry up the book about Drosera, etc. My plants of Sarracenia
variolaris, having lost their spring growth in transmission, have not
yet made any that is satisfactory. So I begged Dr. Mellichamp, who had
sent me leaves with gorge sanded over at the sweet-secretion part, to
send some for the trail. He wrote me it was too late in the season; they
were all drying up. But this morning, with the inclosed postal card,
came several with the sand sticking fairly well to the glutinous line,
and I send you one of them. I wish I could send you Mellichamp’s long
letters, about the two sorts of larvæ, that appropriate, one the upper,
one the lower part of the pitcher.
My wife (who sends her love to you and yours) is much amused by your
backgammon reminiscence. For the year past we have a way of getting on
most peacefully. I sit by her side and play solitaire with two packs of
cards, she looks on and helps, and when we don’t succeed there is nobody
to “flare up” against but luck.
Ever yours,
A. GRAY.
P. S.--I think I never sent you my felicitations upon your election as
Foreign Honorary Member of American Academy Arts and Sciences.
We are proud to number you among the seventy-five (too many). And, I may
tell you, only two negative votes were cast, one by an Academician who
made a speech on the occasion, to which nobody vouchsafed a word of
reply.
A. G.
CAMBRIDGE, June 19, 1874.
MY DEAR DARWIN,--Your second letter reached me last evening, and this
morning came from the publishers some copies of the number of “Nature.”
You seem as pleased and are as ingenuous as a maiden when she first
finds out that she has an admirer!
Now I am a little vexed, as I am apt to be when I let anything be
printed without reading the proof myself. Some one has doctored one
sentence, and made it say the contrary to what I wrote, and to what is
true; I make the reclamation on a separate sheet: and also another,
which may be typographical, but which I am confident I could not have
written; I surely wrote “_to_ many,” not “_in_ many.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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