1855.] SUGGESTIONS AND QUERIES. 6l 



trifling suggestion to such a botanist as yourself; but from 

 what I saw and have heard of you from our dear and kind 

 friend Hooker, I hope and think that you will forgive me, and 

 believe me, with much respect, 



Dear sir, yours very faithfully, 



Charles Darwin. 



C. Darwin to Asa Gray. 



Down, June 8th [1855]. 



My DEAR SIR, I thank you cordially for your remarkably 

 kind letter of the 22nd ult., and for the extremely pleasant 

 and obliging manner in which you have taken my rather 

 troublesome questions. I can hardly tell you how much 

 your list of Alpine plants has interested me, and I can now 

 in some degree picture to myself the plants of your Alpine 

 summits. The new edit, of your Manual is capital news for 

 me. I know from your preface how pressed you are for 

 room, but it would take no space to append (Eu) in brackets 

 to any European plant, and, as far as I am concerned, this 

 would answer every purpose.* From my own experience, 

 whilst making out English plants in our manuals, it has often 

 struck me how much interest it would give if some notion 

 of their range had been given ; and so, I cannot doubt, your 

 American inquirers and beginners would much like to know 

 which of their plants were indigenous and which European. 

 Would it not be well in the Alpine plants to append the very 

 same addition which you have now sent me in MS. ? though 

 here, owing to your kindness, I do not speak selfishly, but 

 merely pro bono Americano publico. I presume it would be 

 too troublesome to give in your manual the habitats of those 

 plants found west of the Rocky Mountains, and likewise those 

 found in Eastern Asia, taking the Yenesei' (?), which, if I 

 remember right, according to Gmelin, is the main partition 



* This suggestion Dr. Gray adopted in subsequent editions. 



