It was prepared to print long ago; is not your fault that it has been delayed so long. The library committee have a right to print it, and might do so without your corrections if you decline to make any. We want the plates, which are now thrown away, and must be published. I would print in the form of a naked list,—except where remarks and descriptions are still wanted,—and to make all right and sure, and to relieve you, I, with Watson’s kind help, will fix it all up for you and read the proofs once, and so save you the worry. And I urgently request you to send this line to Professor Henry, as embodying my opinion, and my offer of help.
I am sure that if the rest of my manuscript is called for, I shall turn it over with satisfaction, though the same applies to it as to yours. And I should either alter accordingly or add notes.
The rest of your letter I will respond to in due time.
But I feel concerned to have those Oregon plates out.
I think I have some right to, as I paid for one hundred of them; but that is no matter. They are now neither published nor unpublished, which is a bad state of things.
Dr. Gray had the manuscript prepared some years before for the second volume of the “United States Exploring Expedition,” and notified the library committee that he was ready for publishing. Meantime came the war, and there was no money or thought for such things. When the country was again quiet and prosperous, the library committee who had formerly known and been interested in the work and its printing had passed away; there was no one to care for it, and the manuscript was never called for.
TO CHARLES DARWIN.
Cambridge, March 7, 1872.
Mr. Packard, one of our best entomologists, a most excellent and modest man, has asked to be introduced to you, that he may pay his respects.
I shy or refuse such applications generally, saying you can rarely see visitors or callers. But Packard is “fish to your net,” has his head crammed with facts bearing on derivation, is a disciple of the Hyatt-Cope school, that you may have heard of,—people who have got hold of what they call a law, though I do not see that they contribute any vera causa at all.