I have no doubt of the full and entire correctness of the principles you work on; and the Kew Floras and the “Genera Plantarum” will more than anything else determine the public botanical opinion and mode of working for the next generation. But I suspect that there will remain after all a great many monotypic genera (consider how many of the most distinct genera are so, or nearly so); and I imagine it is best to work without prejudice for or against them.
I dare promise I shall be satisfied with all you have done in Compositæ. As to Umbelliferæ, I wish you joy of the job, and do hope you will reduce the genera twenty per cent at least. I never could take the least satisfaction in them. I never could collate our Umbelliferæ with European genera, and I have no clear conception of more than half a dozen of our genera....
Ever, dear Bentham, yours most cordially,
A. Gray.
TO CHARLES DARWIN.
Cambridge, March 26, 1867.
This is to acknowledge yours of February 28.
You see I have printed your queries[67] privately (fifty copies), as the best way of putting them where useful answers may be expected. Most of them will go into the hands of agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau, etc. Others to persons I or Wyman may know and rely on. I wish I had had them sooner. My crony Wyman has been two months in Florida, but will be home again before I could send to him.
I did not write the article in the “Nation” on Popular Lecturing, though it contains so many things I have said over and over that it startled me. Then it hits so many nails square on the head that I should think it could be written only in Cambridge or hereabouts.
It is generally supposed to be written by a person in New York, but I suspect a person near by here,—only suspect....
Yes, Magnolia seeds hang out awhile in autumn, finally stretch and break the threads of spiral vessels. Whether birds eat them I don’t know. They look enticing and have a pulpy coat, are bitter and spicy.