errors, or here and there inserting short sentences) and to use all my
strength, WHICH IS BUT LITTLE, to bring out the first part (forming a
separate volume with index, etc.) of the three volumes which will make my
bigger work; so that I am very unwilling to take up time in making
corrections for an American edition. I enclose a list of a few corrections
in the second reprint, which you will have received by this time complete,
and I could send four or five corrections or additions of equally small
importance, or rather of equal brevity. I also intend to write a SHORT
preface with a brief history of the subject. These I will set about, as
they must some day be done, and I will send them to you in a short time--
the few corrections first, and the preface afterwards, unless I hear that
you have given up all idea of a separate edition. You will then be able to
judge whether it is worth having the new edition with YOUR REVIEW PREFIXED.
Whatever be the nature of your review, I assure you I should feel it a
GREAT honour to have my book thus preceded...


ASA GRAY TO CHARLES DARWIN.
Cambridge, January 23rd, 1860.

My dear Darwin,

You have my hurried letter telling you of the arrival of the remainder of
the sheets of the reprint, and of the stir I had made for a reprint in
Boston. Well, all looked pretty well, when, lo, we found that a second New
York publishing house had announced a reprint also! I wrote then to both
New York publishers, asking them to give way to the AUTHOR and his reprint
of a revised edition. I got an answer from the Harpers that they withdraw
--from the Appletons that they had got the book OUT (and the next day I saw
a copy); but that, "if the work should have any considerable sale, we