TRbooora 
JOURNAL OF 
THE NEW. ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 
Vol. 12. March, 1910. No. 135. 
JANE LORING GRAY. 
Tue death of Mrs. Jane Loring Gray, July 29, 1909, at Beverly, 
Mass., must have recalled to many of the readers of Ruopora pleasant 
memories of the days when they were welcomed at the old house in 
the Botanic Garden by Mrs. Gray and her husband, Asa Gray. Al- 
though Mrs. Gray was not herself a botanist, through her sympathy 
with her husband in his scientific work she became acquainted with 
most of the American botanists of his time and, as his companion 
during his travels in. Europe, she met many distinguished foreign 
botanists of the last generation as well as some of the botanical lights 
of a still earlier generation. Her charming manner made her every- 
where welcome and to her quick appreciation of all that was worth 
seeing and hearing was added an excellent memory which enabled 
her to picture to a younger generation the personal appearance, habits 
and surroundings of their distinguished predecessors. 
Mrs. Gray, a daughter of Mr. Charles Greely Loring, was born in 
Boston, Aug. 27, 1821, and first became acquainted with her future 
husband in 1844 while he was delivering a course of lectures at the 
Lowell Institute in Boston. They were married on May 4, 1848. 
During the rest of her long life she lived at the Botanic Garden where 
all botanists were received with a hospitality in which simplicity lent 
an added charm to cordiality, so that even the bashful and those 
accustomed only to a rougher mode of life felt at once at home. They 
never forgot Mrs. Gray nor did she forget them. Never robust and 
during much of her life an invalid, Mrs. Gray was nevertheless able 
to endure the fatigues of travel better than many stronger persons. 
She accompanied her husband twice to California and went with him 
to Mexico when she had reached an age at which few persons would 
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