Ɛpsilon

To Asa Gray   25 December 1874

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.

Dec 25. 74

My dear Gray

Many thanks for your kind note of Dec 11.1 I received & read with very great interest your article on the longevity or duration of varieties. This is a subject on which I have long felt interest; tho’ I never before, as far as I can remember connected it with inter-crossing.2 I think you have put the case very well & clearly. I heard lately from Mrs Treat about Utricularia; but she does not go very deep into any subject, & I have very great difficulty in believing some of her statements.3 I have got the whole of my book in M.S, but I do not know how long it will take me to get it ready for the printers; I hope it will be out late in the spring & I will of course send you a copy.4

The death of Mrs Hooker has indeed been a terrible blow. Poor Hooker came here directly after the funeral & bore up manfully.5 I know I would much sooner die than suffer such a loss

My dear Gray | Yours affectionately | Ch. Darwin

LS

2
There is a lightly annotated copy of Gray’s article (A. Gray 1874e) in DAR 76: B112. In the article, Gray suggested that varieties propagated by cuttings, grafts, and other non-sexual means were theoretically likely to ‘wear out’ because they were not crossed.
3
See letter from Mary Treat, 2 December 1874. CD cited a later article by Treat on Utricularia (bladderwort) in Insectivorous plants, p. 408 and n.
4
Insectivorous plants was published on 2 July 1875 (Correspondence vol. 23, Appendix II).
5
Frances Harriet Hooker, Joseph Dalton Hooker’s wife, died on 13 November 1874 (Allan 1967, p. 225). According to Emma Darwin’s diary (DAR 242), J. D. Hooker stayed at Down House with his daughter Harriet from 19 to 23 November.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-9779,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-9779