it has warmed my heart with all the honourable and noble things you say of
me and it. I was a good deal surprised at Lindley hitting on some of the
remarks, but I never dreamed of you. I admired it chiefly as so well
adapted to tell on the readers of the 'Gardeners' Chronicle'; but now I
admired it in another spirit. Farewell, with hearty thanks...Lyell is
going at man with an audacity that frightens me. It is a good joke; he
used always to caution me to slip over man.


[In the "Gardeners' Chronicle", January 21, 1860, appeared a short letter
from my father which was called forth by Mr. Westwood's communication to
the previous number of the journal, in which certain phenomena of cross-
breeding are discussed in relation to the 'Origin of Species.' Mr.
Westwood wrote in reply (February 11) and adduced further evidence against
the doctrine of descent, such as the identity of the figures of ostriches
on the ancient "Egyptian records," with the bird as we now know it. The
correspondence is hardly worth mentioning, except as one of the very few
cases in which my father was enticed into anything resembling a
controversy.]


ASA GRAY TO J.D. HOOKER.
Cambridge, Mass.,
January 5th, 1860.

My dear Hooker,

Your last letter, which reached me just before Christmas, has got mislaid
during the upturnings in my study which take place at that season, and has
not yet been discovered. I should be very sorry to lose it, for there were