336 ASA GRAY. 



placed him at the head of all American botanists, but also gave him a 

 high reputation abroad. In his knowledge of the difficult order Com- 

 posites, the largest of all the orders of flowering plants, and the one 

 in which he always felt the most interest, he probably surpassed any 

 living botanist. He was at one time urged by Bentham and Hooker to 

 treat that order in their classic " Genera Plantarum," but, as the work 

 involved a residence at Kew for a considerable time, he was obliged to 

 decline the offer. 



It was, however, more especially through his observations on the 

 geographical distribution of plants made incidentally during the pro- 

 gress of his work on our own flora, that he was recognized as a natu- 

 ralist of the highest type by the scientific circles of Europe. When 

 we consider the marked capacity for studies of this nature which he 

 afterwards exhibited, remembering the brilliant contributions to Plant 

 Geography which resulted from the explorations of Robert Brown, 

 Darwin, and Hooker, we can only regret that Gray did not sail as 

 botanist of the Wilkes Expedition. The collectors of the expedi- 

 tion, Dr. Charles Pickering, W. D. Brackenridge, and William Rich, 

 brought back many interesting plants, of which the Phsenogams, except- 

 ing those from the Pacific Coast of America sent to Dr. Torrey, were 

 placed in his hands for description. But Gray would have been more 

 than a collector. He would have brought back impressions, and, recall- 

 ing the charming narrative of the illustrious naturalist of the Beagle, we 

 can imagine the pleasure with which we should have read the journal of 

 a botanist, written with the delicate humor and the keen appreciation 

 of the beautiful and curious in nature which Asa Gray possessed. 



The study of the Wilkes plants, in which he was aided by Bentham's 

 large experience, gracefully acknowledged in his Memorial of Bentham 

 in the American Journal of Science of February, 1885, introduced him 

 to an exotic flora of large range. The work appeared in 1854 as a 

 quarto volume of nearly eight hundred pages, with an atlas of a hun- 

 dred folio plates. 



His first* paper on the distribution of plants appeared in the Ameri- 

 can Journal of Science of September, 1856, and was followed by two 

 other parts the next year. It bore the title of " Statistics of the Flora 

 of the Northern United States," and was prepared at the time he was at 



* In the paper "On the Botany of Japan," p. 442, Gray speaks of a paper on 

 the distribution of plants in the American Journal of Science of an earlier date 

 than the one here mentioned, but the writer is unable to identify the paper in 

 question. 



