From Asa Gray   29 December 1862

My Dear Darwin

A happy New Year to you and yours,—and another stamp for Leonard!¹ Also some corn (maize) of a few distinct sorts.²

To-day a student of Agassiz (entomological)³ brought up to show me a small butterfly received from Canada, “with a singular disease”   The student, who last summer studied your book and made some observations,—of course detected the nature of the disease. viz—a pollinium of Platanthera I think Hookeri, neatly affixed by its disk to each eye;—and both had lost some pollen-packets from the upper part; showing it had done work before being captured.

It is a day-flyer. I judge from structure it is either P. Hookeri or P. orbiculata, and from size rather the former.— And the head is just about the size to catch both discs of the former—as it has done—but to small to have done that with P. orbiculata.

The young man will give me the name of the butterfly in a few days,—when you shall have it.⁴

I thank you heartily for your long and interesting letter of Nov. 23.–26.⁵ I have not had the time nor the spirits to write to you,—and have no time now, tho‘ the spirits are better.

Edinb. Review & Argyle’s article has not come to me yet.⁶ When it does I shall read it with interest; I heard it well spoken of by a very fair and good judge the other day.—who had no idea who wrote it.

M^cMillan I do not see, without going to libraries to look it up.⁷ As Agassiz does nothing at ⁠⟨⁠section missing⁠⟩⁠

I do not at all object to your criticisms on my Dimorphous notes in Sill. Jour.⁸

My object was not so much to commend the terms I had used, as to note that we had here long ago observed (tho’ we did not comprehend the meaning of) these facts.—and to say that I thought the terms not bad even now. I know nothing of Sprengel’s ‘dichogamy’.⁹ Where?

“Dichogamous” then every way better, as well as older term.— extend the meaning and use it.

As to Plantago, my words “closed corolla” show it was the short-stamened & long-styled I was speaking of, as that alone closes the corolla   But the whole of that 2^d paragraph was introduced in proof, and as short as possible—hence partly the obscurity.— I saw no sense, and the printers as you see made bad work with it.¹⁰

“Precocious fertilization” I incline to stand by.—¹¹ In Violets & Impatiens, Lespedeza, &c &c— I believe that the condition is not so much “special modification” as it is arrest of development.

While it is the earlier flowers in Abronia, Nyctaginia, Pavonia hastata, Ruellia &c—that are thus fertilized in the bud,—and partly so in Impatiens, in Viola sagittata, cucullata, rotundifolia, &c—¹² the vernal flowers are the ordinary,—but the peculiar closed ones are produced all summer long.

(I cant tell you about Specularia, as I could get no plants of it last summer.¹³

The main object of my note was to correct Oliver, who, I suspect, took his cue from Hooker—who, I believe, now came to understand this matter as you and I do.—¹⁴

We have, at least, a clear & consistent notion about it, and I believe it is a correct one.

The various suggestive matters in your long letter I must let drop— —only answering your question in P.S.—about Fragaria¹⁵