Meanwhile, if Shaw would take your herbarium upon proper terms, you might at any time have any particular families of plants with you, in your house, to work at....
Mr. Shaw has lately written. I inclose his letter to you. I have just replied to it, expressing a lively interest in his projected establishment, and offering my best services if he requires them in the way of advice or suggestion. I hope it will be all right in the end....
CHAPTER VI.
LETTERS TO DARWIN AND OTHERS.
1860-1868.
As before stated, Dr. Gray’s letters to Dr. Darwin previous to 1862 have been destroyed, save the one dated January 23, 1860, which was published in Darwin’s “Life and Letters,” and is here reproduced for the convenience of the reader, as well as Dr. Gray’s letter of January 5, 1860, to Dr. Joseph D. Hooker, also published in Darwin’s “Life and Letters.” The original letters to Darwin later than 1862 have been more or less injured, apparently by the ravages of mice, so that in copying them it has sometimes been necessary to supply missing words. Where these are not obvious, the supposed words are enclosed in brackets.
The letters in this chapter also include the period of the civil war; into which, as they show, Dr. Gray threw himself with all his earnestness. He helped as far as he was able in every way. A company of the men who were too old or otherwise incapacitated from going to the front was enlisted in Cambridge to guard the State Arsenal there, and also to be ready to be summoned in any emergency; and he joined the ranks and was faithful in the drilling and every duty to which they were called. It is hard to realize, in these days, how all the community worked together in all possible ways; it was the business of life.
TO J. D. HOOKER.
Cambridge, January 5, 1860.
My dear Hooker,—Your last letter, which reached me just before Christmas, has got mislaid during the upturnings in my study which take place at that season, and has not yet been discovered. I should be very sorry to lose it, for there were in it some botanical mems. which I had not secured....
The principal part of your letter was high laudation of Darwin’s book.
Well, the book has reached me, and I finished its careful perusal four days ago; and I freely say that your laudation is not out of place.