My Dear Darwin

When I received yours of July 15,¹ I had just returned from a week of sailing on our New England coast, I have now had a week of pottering at home, and next week I go into the country for 10 days. When I return I must set down to a new ed. of my Manual of Botany, and other stuff.²

I will soon send you a brief note on a complete, symmetrical, regular, but 2–merous Orchid flower,—in Cypripedium.³

Brace’s full name is Charles Loring Brace. Curious that D^r. Wells should have first propounded Nat. selection.⁴ But a man far-seeing in one line is likely to be so in others.⁵

Appleton has, at my request, returned the sheets I had sent him, as he persisted in the idea of making what he called the essential alterations on his old stereotype plates, I thought for any petty pecuniary advantage, even connive at such doings.⁶ I wish your publisher would arrange with some American bookseller to supply the market here at a rate which would make the English edition generally available.⁷

When your Variation-book is ready, we will see what can be done with that, & perhaps at the same time may then get a satisfactory reprint of Origin⁸

I shall take your sheets with me for rail-way reading. I have now got all the sheets.— Intending to amuse hours of travel with them, I had not till this moment read the passage, on Owen in the Hist. Sketch. Owen’s proceedings are characteristic. And your note is the prettiest piece of work of the kind I ever had the pleasure to see.⁹ I never read a more telling page. Owen must be mad enough at being “knocked into a cocked hat”—as we say,— But I see not how he can complain.

I wait with interest the result about Rhamnus. I enclose fls of R. lanceolatus.¹⁰

Clarke was of the greatest use to Agassiz and I cannot but think that A. used him very unfairly as soon as he no longer wanted him or found it difficult to pay for his services.¹¹ C. is a capital observer; but a man of a lumbering sort of mind. His book was founded on a small course of lectures,—of which I heard only one, and found then—and in conversation with him too—that he was quite incapable of understanding what Natural Selection meant—as much so as Agassiz himself—only the former would like to understand it, and the latter wilfully would not.¹²

You should study Wyman’s observations in his own papers. He is always careful to keep his inferences close to his facts, & is as good an experimenter, I judge, as he is an observer. He has a new series of observations to publish. I think, that he has not at all pronounced in favor of spontaneous generation—but I will bet on his experiments against Pasteur, any day.¹³

I am so glad you are so well: pray keep so,

Ever Yours affectionately | Asa Gray