42 Rhodora [Marcu 
care to make such a journey. She also went with him to England in 
1850, sailing in a packet, as the longer voyage was expected to benefit 
her health, and later they made several other trips to Europe, the last 
being in 1887 shortly before Prof. Gray’s death, Jan. 30, 1888. 
After her husband’s death Mrs. Gray led a quiet life always inter- 
ested in botanists and their work and always glad to see visiting 
botanists until with advancing years she was forced to live in retire- 
ment. For several years she was absorbed in the arrangement of her 
husband’s correspondence and edited the Letters of Asa Gray, which 
appeared in 1893 in two volumes. The Gray Herbarium, which had 
become the property of Harvard University, had but slight endow- 
ment, wholly inadequate to provide for its care and development. In 
1899, however, the announcement was made of an anonymous offer of 
$20,000 to found an Asa Gray Professorship of Systematic Botany, 
a position to be united with the curatorship of the Gray Herbarium. 
The offer was made conditional on the raising of at least $30,000 as a 
Gray Memorial Fund for the further endowment of the Gray Herba- 
rium. The required sum was raised, but even the University authori- 
ties were in ignorance of the name of the person who had made the 
offer. It was Mrs. Gray, and botanists will be glad to know that it 
was the wife of Prof. Gray, who, by her very substantial gift, awakened 
the new interest and initiated the movement which has led in recent 
years to a much more effective endowment of the herbarium which he 
founded. 
Mrs. Gray's last days were passed with her family, who were always 
devoted to her. Had she lived a month longer she would have reached 
her 89th year, a life as long as it was happy and useful. ‘The funeral 
services were held in the old house in Cambridge and, as they departed, 
the friends felt not only that an old friend had been taken from them 
but also that the house so rich in associations with the past was closed 
to them forever. — W. G. F. 
