Dear Darwin.

Your latest is of 26^th ult.¹ You need not worry! It never wearies nor bores me to write to you—in the off hand way I do.² I enjoy our correspondence too much to consent to curtail or interrupt it. I learn from you—here in this remote part of the world—a thousand things which I should not otherwise know at all. And you stimulate my mind far more than any one else, except, perhaps, Hooker.³ So please do not make a fuss, but let me go on in my own fashion, and send me your fresh and stimulating letters—whenever you are in the mood for it.

I am now in my vacation, and already—having idled and dawdled a week or two, I am as well and hearty as possible, and in the best of spirits. We should leave home this week for 3 weeks run in the country. But the sickness of my wife’s nephew, Lieut. Jackson of Mass. Cavalry⁴ will keep us a while,—as tho’ not alarming it might take a bad turn,—and so I may not be in the country for a week or two yet. We shall see.

So I must stop this idling and set to some of the work which has laid so long untouched around me. I am to-day fixing up an abstract of Bates’s Mimetic Analogy paper, &c—for Sill. Journal.⁵

Get your Mitchella on a shady well-drained slope, and let it well alone, & it will thrive. I will send fresher seed of Sicyos & Echinocystis.⁶ And if I can remember you shall have seeds of Houstonia.⁷

I have strong & fresh Drose⁠⟨⁠ra⁠⟩⁠ rotundifolia, & it will soon turn in its bristles & stick the viscid gland fast to a fly—binding him fast on all sides with Lilliputian cords.⁸ But it is awfully slow about it,—say 3 or 4 hours. And the next day, the leaf sometimes becomes involute & folds over or curves around the insect. But what good. If the fly is not stuck fast in alighting, no movement takes place to hold him till he has got away if he ever could. However it is an indication of what is so effectually done in Dionæa.⁹

Rotary movement of end of tendril-bearing stems is common, is it not, and well known?¹⁰

Any notes you will give me to put in Sill. Journal, I shall ⁠⟨⁠alw⁠⟩⁠ays delight in.¹¹

⁠⟨⁠I⁠⟩⁠ have been reading Owen’s Aye-Aye paper.¹² Well, this is rich and cool! Did I not tell you in Atlantic long ago that Owen had a transmutation theory of his own.¹³ It is your Hamlet, with the part of Hamlet left out.¹⁴ But as you say now you don’t so much insist on Nat. Selection if you can only have derivation of species,— and Owen goes in for derivation on the largest scale, you may as well lovingly embrace!¹⁵ Oh, it is rare fun. How I could now tease Agassiz, if I could see him,— only he is of late so cross and sore.¹⁶

He has been digging various pits for me, but has fallen himself into the pit that he digged. However, I am good-natured; and only laugh at him.

I have been so far disappointed in getting no Gymnadenia tridentata. But I still hope for it. I must have it, indeed.¹⁷

Benth.’s address is good—chiefly very good.¹⁸ But he speaks of Wyman’s paper without having duly considered it.¹⁹ Wyman’s experiments are far better than Pasteur’s, & the results opposite!²⁰

A. Gray.

PS. | Papers just in—or rather telegrams—that you in London were daily awaiting & expecting the capture of Washington. etc.²¹—and speculating as to whether Jeff. Davis’s envois from Washington might not be received at London—as a fait accompli.—²² A good-deal of little-concealed joy. &c—

Oh foolish people! When will you see that there is only one end to all this:—and that the North never dreams of any other,—the complete putting down of the rebellion. And since 1863 began, it was clear that it would be attended with the annihilation of slavery.²³

Time was when we should have highly valued English appreciation of the right cause.— We have now long ceased to care or think about it.

We only wish you had the city of New York. But the sympathizers with secession and riot there have done their worst—and lost their game.²⁴ The city of New York is the only part of our country which I am ashamed of. And the trouble there is that it is not American.

Enough— Good Bye | A. G.