A few days later he wrote again to the same correspondent:
"What a grand immense benefit you conferred on me by getting Murray to publish my book. I never till to-day realised that it was getting widely distributed; for in a letter from a lady to-day to E., she says she heard a man enquiring for it at the _Railway Station!!!_ at Waterloo Bridge; and the bookseller said that he had none till the new edition was out. The bookseller said he had not read it, but had heard it was a very remarkable book!!!"
_C. D. to J. D. Hooker._ Down, 14th [January, 1860].
... I heard from Lyell this morning, and he tells me a piece of news. You are a good-for-nothing man; here you are slaving yourself to death with hardly a minute to spare, and you must write a review on my book! I thought it[187] a very good one, and was so much struck with it, that I sent it to Lyell. But I assumed, as a matter of course, that it was Lindley's. Now that I know it is yours, I have re-read it, and my kind and good friend, 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 admire it in another spirit. Farewell, with hearty thanks....
_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 in it some botanical mems. which I had not secured....
The principal part of your letter was high laudation of Darwin's book.
Well, the book has reached me, and I finished its careful perusal four days ago; and I freely say that your laudation is not out of place.
It is done in a _masterly manner_. It might well have taken twenty years to produce it. It is crammed full of most interesting matter--thoroughly digested--well expressed--close, cogent, and taken as a system it makes out a better case than I had supposed possible....
Agassiz, when I saw him last, had read but a part of it. He says it is _poor--very poor_!! (entre nous). The fact [is] he is very much annoyed by it, ... and I do not wonder at it. To bring all _ideal_ systems within the domain of science, and give good physical or natural explanations of all his capital points, is as bad as to have Forbes take the glacier materials ... and give scientific explanation of all the phenomena.