o$6 'VARIATION UNDER DOMESTICATION: [1867. 



P.S. A Russian who is translating my new book into 

 Russian has been here, and says you are immensely read in 

 Russia, and many editions how many I forget. Six editions 

 of Buckle and four editions of the ' Origin.' 



C. Darwin to Asa Gray. 



Down, October 16 [1867]. 



MY DEAR GRAY, I send by this post clean sheets of Vol. 

 I. up to p. 336, and there are only 411 pages in this vol. I 

 am very glad to hear that you are going to review my book ; 

 but if the Nation * is a newspaper I wish it were at the bot- 

 tom of the sea, for I fear that you will thus be stopped re- 

 viewing me in a scientific journal. The first volume is all 

 details, and you will not be able to read it ; and you must 

 remember that the chapters on plants are written for natural- 

 ists who are not botanists. The last chapter in Vol. I. is, 

 however, I think, a curious compilation of facts ; it is on 

 bud-variation. In Vol. II. some of the chapters are more 

 interesting; and I shall be very curious to hear your verdict 

 on the chapter on close inter-breeding. The chapter on what 

 I call Pangenesis will be called a mad dream, and I shall be 

 pretty well satisfied if you think it a dream worth publishing ; 

 but at the bottom of my own mind I think it contains a great 

 truth. I finish my book with a semi-theological paragraph, 

 in which I quote and differ from you ; what you will think of 

 it, I know not. . . . 



C. Darwin to J. D. Hooker. 



Down, November 17 [1867]. 



MY DEAR HOOKER, Congratulate me, for I have finished 

 the last revise of the last sheet of my book. It has been an 

 awful job : seven and a half months correcting the press : the 

 book, from much small type, does not look big, but is really 

 very big. I have had hard work to keep up to the mark, but 



* The book was reviewed by Dr, Gray in the Nation, Mar. 19, 1868, 



