skip to content

Darwin Correspondence Project

To J. D. Hooker   [17 July 1860]1

at Miss Wedgwoods | Hartfield | Tonbridge Wells.

Tuesday Night

My dear Hooker

Asa Gray has sent me Proc. American Acad. p. 409 to 416 and 425 to 434. So that 417 to 424 are missing.2 If you have these pages & can lay your hand on them, pray put them in blank cover & send them to me,—as I much wish to see all.— He seems to me to discuss subject quite excellently.—3 I have been turning in my mind whether I would not send my copy to the Athenæum with request that they would reprint this discussion— But Heaven knows whether they would.—   I shall think a bit more & reread it, before deciding4

Yours affect. | C. Darwin

Etty has improved a little more these two last days, & has twice sat in arm-chair for above 12 Hour.—   I can see Doctors are afraid of mesenteric mischief.—5

Footnotes

Although the letter is endorsed ‘July 22/60’, CD wrote it on the Tuesday before the letter to Asa Gray, 22 July [1860].
CD refers to the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 4 (1860): 410–15, 424–31, in which a debate on Origin between Asa Gray, John Amory Lowell, Louis Agassiz, and Francis Bowen was reported. The pages that CD considered missing were in fact not concerned with Origin. Both parts of the article are in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL.
In the report of the academy’s meeting held on 10 April 1860, Gray defended CD’s views from criticisms raised by Lowell, Bowen, and Agassiz at the previous session. See Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 4 (1860): 411–15. Gray’s comments are marked in CD’s copy.
For a fuller account of Henrietta Emma Darwin’s condition, see the letter to J. D. Hooker, 29 July [1860].

Bibliography

Origin: On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1859.

Summary

Asa Gray’s articles in Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences [10 Apr 1860] excellent; considering asking Athenæum to reprint them.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-2878
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Sent from
Wedgwood, S. E. (b) Hartfield
Source of text
DAR 115: 69
Physical description
ALS 2pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 2878,” accessed on 29 November 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-2878.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 8

letter