My Dear Darwin.

I have yours of the 4^th. inst. which I think has crossed a line from me, telling you that I had got the sheets of Origin back from the Appleton’s.

You rightly infer that there is no hope at present for an Amer. reprint, unless you agree to fall in with Appleton’s shabby ways—which I think you will not be tempted to do.¹

But I am encouraged to think that I can make a good arrangement with Messrs. Ticknor & Fields, of Boston, to bring out the new book, & allow Author 12 per cent. I shall confer with Mr. Fields.²

Agassiz is back (I have not seen him), and he went at once down to meeting of National Academy of Sciences—from which I sedulously keep away—and, I hear proved to them that the glacial period covered the whole continent of America with unbroken ice, and closed with a significant gesture and the remark “So here is the end of the Darwin theory”!³ How do you like that.

I said last winter, that Agassiz was bent upon covering the whole continent with ice,—and that the motive of the discovery he was sure to make was, to make it sure that there should be no coming down of any terrestial life from tertiary or post tertiary period to ours.⁴

You cannot deny that he has done his work effectually, in a truly imperial way!

I am glad your new ed. is not to be issued for 3 months yet. I want to read the sheets at odd moments and give a notice of the new ed. in some periodical—tho’ I can give little time to it.⁵

Ever dear Darwin, | Yours cordially | A. Gray

Charles Darwin, Esq | Down | Bromley | Please post