Botanists -- United States -- Correspondence; Gray, Asa, 1810-1888 -- Correspondence
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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