An eminent American botanist; born at Paris, N. Y., Nov. 18, 1810; died at Cambridge Mass., Jan. 30, 1888. He was Professor at Harvard from 1842 to 1873, when he resigned to take charge of the herbarium of Harvard. In 1874 he was chosen a regent of the Smithsonian Institution. He was recognized throughout the world as one of the leading botanists of the age. Besides contributions to scientific journals, his numerous works include: “Elements of Botany” (1836); “Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States” (1848); “Botany of the United States Pacific Exploring Expedition” (1854); “School and Field Book of Botany” (1869); “Natural Science and Religion” (1880).

Personal

  I wish we could find a place for my friend Gray in the college…. He has no superior in botany, considering his age, and any subject that he takes up he handles in a masterly manner…. He is an uncommonly fine fellow, and will make a great noise in the scientific world one of these days. It is good policy for the college to secure the services and affections of young men of talent, and let them grow up with the institution…. He would do great credit to the college; and he will be continually publishing. He has just prepared for publication in the Annals of the Lyceum two capital botanical papers…. Gray has a capital herbarium and collection of minerals. He understands most of the branches of natural history well, and in botany he has few superiors.

  Gray’s work as a teacher extended over a period of more than fifty years, dating from the first lectures on botany at the Fairfield Medical School, in 1831 and 1832, and the publication of his “Elements of Botany,” in 1836. During that period he trained up a whole race of botanists, now scattered through all parts of the United States, so that wherever he went he was greeted by those who remembered his instruction with pleasure. When at Santa Barbara in 1885, an elderly man, who seemed to be about his own age, introduced himself as a former pupil in his first class at Harvard. As a college lecturer he was not seen at his best, for his somewhat hesitating manner when he spoke extemporaneously was unfavourably contrasted with the fervid, almost impetuous utterance of Agassiz, and the clear exposition and dignified address of Jeffries Wyman, his two great contemporaries at Harvard. In his public addresses he always spoke from notes, and, especially in his later years, his striking expressive face commanded the attention of his hearers from the start. In the class-room he was personally much liked, and he made a strong impression on the majority of students, although, in the days when every student was forced to study botany, there were of course some who would not have cared for the subject under any circumstances. The instruction, as was natural, bearing in mind his own early training and the state of botany in this country at the time when he became professor at Harvard, was confined mainly to the morphological study of flowering plants; for he recognized that, until some advance had been made in that direction, it was out of the question dealing adequately with the more technically complicated subjects of histology, embryology, and physiology.

  He was most genial, [1881] and crammed with useful information, and had the rare art of adapting himself at once to any new acquaintance, seeming to know and enter into their particular hobbies. He set them galloping away easily on them, and showing themselves off to their best advantage, perfectly convinced that they were instructing Asa Gray, not Asa Gray them. His wife was very pretty and energetic, and left few sights of London unseen.

General

  Asa Gray and Dr. Torrey are known wherever the study of botany is pursued. Gray, with his indefatigable zeal, will gain upon his competitors.

  But, after all, the mainspring and central fact about the garden is Dr. Gray himself. Though now in his 75th year, this kindly professor and wise investigator possesses to an admirable degree the activity and alertness of his younger days, when an expedition with him was a pedestrian feat to be proud of; and he has added to his quick wit and keen perception such breadth and ripeness of judgment, such fruit of large experience as make him not only facile princeps among our botanists, but give him foremost rank among the critics of all branches of biological science. From the beginning of his career his name has been associated with the progress of botany in the United States.

  The greatest botanist—may we not say the greatest naturalist?—that America has yet produced.

  By the death of Asa Gray this academy has lost a member whose activity and zeal were unceasing, and whose brilliant talents as a scientific writer, not surpassed by those of any of the illustrious names on our roll, added much to the reputation of the society at home and abroad…. Dr. Gray had the rare faculty of being able to adapt himself to all classes of readers. With the scientific he was learned, to the student he was instructive and suggestive, and he charmed the general reader by the graceful beauty of his style, while to the children he was simplicity itself. The little books, “How Plants Grow,” and “How Plants Behave,” found their way where botany as botany could not have gained an entrance, and they set in motion a current which moved in the general direction of a higher science with a force which can hardly be estimated…. As a reviewer he was certainly extraordinary. Some of his reviews were in reality elaborate essays, in which, taking the work of another as a text, he presented his own views on important topics in a masterly manner. Others were technically critical, while some were simply concise and very clear summaries of lengthy works. Taken collectively, they show better than any other of his writings the literary excellence of his style, as well as his great fertility and his fairness and acuteness as a critic. Never unfair, never ill-natured, his sharp criticism, like the surgeon’s knife, aimed not to wound, but to cure; and if he sometimes felt it his duty to be severe, he never failed to praise what was worthy.

  I did not follow Gray into his later comments on Darwinism, and I never read his “Darwiniana.” My recollection of his attitude after acceptance of the doctrine, and during the first few years of his active promulgation of it, is that he understood it clearly, but sought to harmonise it with his prepossessions, without disturbing its physical principles in any way. He certainly showed far more knowledge and appreciation of the contents of the “Origin” than any of the reviewers and than any of the commentators, yourself excepted. Latterly he got deeper and deeper into theological and metaphysical wanderings, and finally formulated his ideas in an illogical fashion.

  No student of natural theology can afford to neglect the original store-houses of argument and illustration which Dr. Gray has placed within reach…. To the late lovable, devout, and profoundly philosophical botanist of Harvard College the church owes more than it yet appreciates for its deliverance from such another mistake as was made in the time of Galileo.

  Gray’s comprehensive knowledge of the plants of the world, of their distribution, and specifically of the relations of North American species, genera and orders to those of the other continents, and the precision of his knowledge, enabled him to be of much service to Darwin in the preparation of the first edition of the “Origin of Species,” and afterward, also, in the elaboration of Darwin’s other publications. His mind was not very strongly bound to opinions about species, partly because of his natural openness to facts, his conclusions seeming always to have only a reasonable prominence in his philosophical mind, rarely enough to exclude the free entrance of the new, whatever the source, and to a considerable extent from the difficulties he had experienced in defining species and genera amidst the wide diversities and approximate blendings which variation had introduced.

  There is a special cachet in all Dr. Gray’s papers, great and small, which is his own, and which seems to me to distinguish him from even his more famous contemporaries. There is the scientific spirit in its best form, imaginative, fearless, cautious, with large horizons, and very attentive and careful to objections and qualifications; and there is besides, what is so often wanting in scientific writing, the human spirit always remembering that besides facts and laws, however wonderful or minute, there are souls and characters over against them of as great account as they, in whose mirrors they are reflected, whom they excite and delight, and without whose interest they would be blanks.

  Of course, the letters give special prominence to the nature and scope of the botanical researches and discoveries on which his fame securely rests, but these letters have been chosen so skilfully that they can be read even by a layman with pleasure and profit…. They show that from the very outset he became not merely the correspondent but the intimate and affectionate friend of the leading botanists in all countries. The only interruptions of his toil were his occasional journeys, but these were all made tributary to his work. In these journeys, as soon as he had fairly thrown off the vexations of administrative service, he entered on new scenes with the glee of a boy, and records his impressions of delight without restraint or reserve. We shall be mistaken if the charming journals of travel only lightly freighted with botanical lore but rich in friendly gossip, botanical and other, do not prove welcome to many a reader who does not know one plant from another.