My dear Falconer,—I have just received your note, and by good luck a day earlier than properly, and I lose not a moment in answering you, and thanking you heartily for your offer of the valuable specimen; but I have no aquarium and shall soon start for Torquay, so that it would be a thousand pities that I should have it. Yet I should certainly much like to see it, but I fear it is impossible. Would not the Zoological Society be the best place? and then the interest which many would take in this extraordinary animal would repay you for your trouble.
Kind as you have been in taking this trouble and offering me this specimen, to tell the truth I value your note more than the specimen. I shall keep your note amongst a very few precious letters. Your kindness has quite touched me.
Yours affectionately and gratefully.
My father, who had the strongest belief in the value of Asa Gray's help, was anxious that his evolutionary writings should be more widely known in England. In the autumn of 1860, and the early part of 1861, he had a good deal of correspondence with him as to the publication, in the form of a pamphlet, of Gray's three articles in the July, August, and October numbers of the Atlantic Monthly, 1860.
The reader will find these articles republished in Dr. Gray's Darwiniana, p. 87, under the title "Natural Selection not inconsistent with Natural Theology." The pamphlet found many admirers, and my father believed that it was of much value in lessening opposition, and making converts to Evolution. His high opinion of it is shown not only in his letters, but by the fact that he inserted a special notice of it in a prominent place in the third edition of the Origin. Lyell, among others, recognised its value as an antidote to the kind of criticism from which the cause of Evolution suffered. Thus my father wrote to Dr. Gray: "Just to exemplify the use of your pamphlet, the Bishop of London was asking Lyell what he thought of the review in the Quarterly, and Lyell answered, 'Read Asa Gray in the Atlantic.'"
On the same subject he wrote to Gray in the following year:—
"I believe that your pamphlet has done my book great good; and I thank you from my heart for myself: and believing that the views are in large part true, I must think that you have done natural science a good turn. Natural Selection seems to be making a little progress in England and on the Continent; a new German edition is called for, and a French one has just appeared."
The following may serve as an example of the form assumed between these friends of the animosity at that time so strong between England and America[223]:—
"Talking of books, I am in the middle of one which pleases me, though it is very innocent food, viz. Miss Cooper's Journal of a Naturalist. Who is she? She seems a very clever woman, and gives a capital account of the battle between our and your weeds.[224] Does it not hurt your Yankee pride that we thrash you so confoundedly? I am sure Mrs. Gray will stick up for your own weeds. Ask her whether they are not more honest, downright good sort of weeds. The book gives an extremely pretty picture of one of your villages; but I see your autumn, though so much more gorgeous than ours, comes on sooner, and that is one comfort."
A question constantly recurring in the letters to Gray is that of design. For instance:—