My dear Gray,
I send by this post all the clean sheets as yet printed, and I hope to send the remainder within a fortnight. Please observe that the first six chapters are not readable, and the six last very dull. Still I believe that the results are valuable. If you review the book, I shall be very curious to see what you think of it, for I care more for your judgment than for that of almost any one else. I know also that you will speak the truth, whether you approve or disapprove. Very few will take the trouble to read the book, and I do not expect you to read the whole, but I hope you will read the latter chapters.
... I am so sick of correcting the press and licking my horrid bad style into intelligible English.
[The 'Effects of Cross and Self-fertilisation' was published on November 10, 1876, and 1500 copies were sold before the end of the year. The following letter refers to a review in 'Nature' (February 15, 1877.):]
CHARLES DARWIN TO W. THISELTON DYER. Down, February 16, 1877.
Dear Dyer,
I must tell you how greatly I am pleased and honoured by your article in 'Nature,' which I have just read. You are an adept in saying what will please an author, not that I suppose you wrote with this express intention. I should be very well contented to deserve a fraction of your praise. I have also been much interested, and this is better than mere pleasure, by your argument about the separation of the sexes. I dare say that I am wrong, and will hereafter consider what you say more carefully: but at present I cannot drive out of my head that the sexes must have originated from two individuals, slightly different, which conjugated. But I am aware that some cases of conjugation are opposed to any such views.
With hearty thanks, Yours sincerely, CHARLES DARWIN.