voL.1v.] The Last Letter of Dr. Gray. 373 
By a corollary of the rule that priority of publiestion fixes the name, taken 
follows that in any case Conioselinum Canadense 1€ p ame fo 
those who hold to the genus Conioselinum. I have laid down what I take 
to be the correct view as his, in my ‘‘ Structural Botany,”’ paragraph 
794, where it is supported by the high authority of Bentham. lieve it. 
is more and more acceded to by the most competent jud There are: 
O 
also make the law of tied mechanically override other equally valid 
laws without regard to sense. To such the old law maxim of the elder De 
Candolle was cae cena jus, summa injuria. If you like to adopt 
their ideas, you have at hand a still older, the very oldest, name, namely 
Conioselinum Chinense, for I can certify that the plant we are concerned 
with is Athamantha Chinensis of Linnaeus. Very truly yours, 
RAY. 
The following comments from the Journal of Botany (London), 
may be of interest. 
[‘‘In this hag ta for 1892, pp. 254, 318, reference was made to a letter— 
the last written by Asa Gray—which, owing to circumstances not very 
clearly related, had never been published. The volume of the Letters of Asa 
Gray, just issued by Messrs. Macmillan, contains the document in full, and 
we here reproduce it. 
‘*The circumstances enn with its writing and subsequent non- 
publication require to be s That.Asa Gray was willing it should be 
pu ubli shed, the letter itself a clear; that he considered it important is. 
ge in the Zefters which introduces it: ‘On Sunday 
letter to Dr. Britton, which follows, and when remonstrated with for making 
the exertion said ‘it was me and must be written.’ He died on the 
2d spe ag following Febenery 
ankind h t to the last utterances of 
eal men, and it m ight have been ete that Dr. Britton would have 
hastened to avail himself of the permission expressly given by the writer 
to publish in his Bu//etin the last contribution ever made by Asa Gray to the 
literature which he had enriched for so many years. So far, however, was 
this from being the case that it was not until Gray’s fellow-worker himself 
lay on his death-bed that any knowledge of its existence was made public, 
issn Watson, in his last illness, dictated for the Botanical Gazette some 
arks ‘On Nomenclature,’ which appeared in that journal for June, 1892, 
aa which contain the following passage: ‘I must express surprise that 
Dr. Britton has not considered it his duty to publish the last written words 
of Dr. Gray which were addressed to him upon this subject, and which 
