1888.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 67 



Prof. W. P. Wilson said :— 



I wish to offer a few words on the relation sustained by Dr. Asa 

 Gray to the various leading scientific societies and naturalists of the 

 old world. I do this all the more gladly because like some others 

 of our true scientific men he was known better abroad than in his 

 own land. I do not wish to say that Dr. Gray was not well known 

 at home, for he Avas. His series of text-books, eight in all, has in- 

 troduced his name Avherex'er botany is Avell taught, but had hi& 

 celebrity in this country depended on his scientific papers and books 

 not intended for the general reader, he might have been almost a& 

 unknown to the masses as Jeffries Wyman, who wrote no text-books 

 but made some very important additions to science and consequently 

 was much better known in England and on the Continent than here. 

 In this country, to the great majority of individuals who had seen or 

 heard of Dr. Gray, his name was inseparably connected with the finest 

 set of text books ever issued in the English language. Only a few 

 botanists and friends knew of his incessant labor on original ques- 

 tions, and that the results of this work were frequently published in 

 the proceedings of the difl^erent societies. It was this latter kind of 

 work which rapidly gained for him abroad a great recognition. 



While Dr. Grav in his early career labored incessantlv at his 

 chosen work, went on numerous collecting tours, prepared important 

 papers on the Grasses and Sedges, gave lectures on botany in two or 

 three schools and colleges, published several minor papers in differ- 

 ent societies and made himself indispensable in the early work of the 

 Flora of North America Avhich Dr. Torrey had already begun — he 

 was known only to a vei'y limited circle at home. 



This activity, accuracy and ability in botany had already made 

 him through his collecting and papers quite a reputation abroad and 

 had as early as 1836 secured for him membership in three foreign 

 societies: The Royal Academy of Sciences of Stockholm in 1829, 

 the Imperial Academy Naturse Curiosorum, Warsaw, 1885, and the 

 Royal Botanical Society of Regensburg (Ratisbon) 1886. 



Dr. Gray's visits to Europe were in all six. He first went for 

 botanical study in Xovember 1838, returning in the November or 

 the following year. The progress of the North American Fhjra re- 

 quired the study and comparison of the many collections which in 

 earlier times had been sent over from America to the European 

 herbaria. 



