“My Dear Darwin, you have such a way of putting things, and write in such a captivating way. Almost thou persuadest me to have been ‘a hairy quadruped, of arboreal habits, furnished with a tail and pointed ears’…”
So wrote Asa Gray (pictured, right) in 1871. Gray was the most important US botanist of the 19th century, Darwin’s champion in America, and a devout Christian. His letter is one of hundreds of previously unpublished letters that will soon be available to the public for the first time as part of the Darwin Correspondence Project (www.lib.cam.ac.uk/Departments/Darwin) run by the University…
