From Asa Gray 29 July 1875
Botanic Garden, Cambridge, Mass.
July 29 1875
My Dear Darwin
I have been digging away, very hard, at Californian Botany, and shall have no respite all summer.—1 nor do I particularly feel the need of it yet.
I write to beg you will not set me down for an ungrateful fellow, because—thanks to your thoughtful kindness—I have had “Insectivorous Plants” for a fortnight, and have made no sign.2 I meant to have gone through it, and then have written, making some remarks—usually of admiration sometimes, perhaps a suggestion of criticism—which you at once turn the point of.
But the fact is, I have been, and am, so driven with work upon necessary, but far duller matters, that I have not yet read 30 pages!! Only to think of it.
But next Sunday I mean to go through it. I shall not only “be delighted when I have read it”, but shall have a treat in the reading.
You have a wonderful knack.
I hope you are very well, and we should be glad to know it.
Yours affectionately | A. Gray
Footnotes
Bibliography
Insectivorous plants. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1875.
Summary
Has received but not yet read Insectivorous plants.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-10099
- From
- Asa Gray
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Botanic Garden, Cambridge, Mass.
- Source of text
- DAR 165: 188
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 10099,” accessed on 24 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-10099.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 23