ASA GRAY. 333 



of his style, as well as his great fertility and his fairness and acuteness as 

 a critic. Never unfair, never ill-natured, his sharp criticism, like the 

 surgeon's knife, aimed not to wound, but to cure ; and if he sometimes 

 felt it his duty to be severe, he never failed to praise what was worthy. 

 The number of his reviews and notices written during his connection 

 with the American Journal of Science as editor and assistant editor for 

 over thirty years, and for the North American Review, the Nation, 

 the Atlantic Monthly, and numerous other journals, is enormous, and it 

 almost seems as if he must have written notices of the greater part of all 

 the botanical works he had ever read. Those intimately acquainted 

 with him more than half believed that he was able to write good notices 

 of books written in languages which he could not read. He was able, 

 as if by instinct, to catch the spirit and essence of what he read, without 

 any exertion on his part. One who wrote so much might have become 

 monotonous. But he was never prosy, and his style was so easy and 

 flowing, and so constantly enlivened by sprightly allusions and pleasing 

 metaphors, that one could read what he wrote for the mere pleasure of 

 the reading. His was one of the rare cases where Science had appro- 

 priated to herself one who would have been an ornament to any purely 

 literary profession. 



It would be presumption were we to express an opinion on the 

 position of Gray as a scientific botanist. Fortunately for us, it is 

 unnecessary. The greatest living systematic botanist, Sir J. D. Hooker, 

 the one by his attainments and position fitted above all others to speak 

 with authority on the subject, has already recorded his opinion in the 

 following words : — 



" When the history of the progress of botany during the nineteenth 

 century shall be written, two names will hold high positions: those of 

 Professor Augustin Pyrame De Candolle and of Professor Asa Gray. . . . 

 Each devoted half a century of unremitting labour to the investigation and 

 description of the plants of continental areas, and they founded herbaria 

 and libraries, each in his own country, which have become permanent and 

 quasi-national institutions. . . . There is much in their lives and works 

 that recalls the career of Linnaeus, of whom they were worthy disciples, in 

 the comprehensiveness of their labour, the excellence of their methods, 

 their judicious conception of the limits of genera and species, the terseness 

 and accuracy of their descriptions, and the clearness of their scientific 

 language." 



The accuracy of the resemblance of Gray and De Candolle, so admi- 

 rably and justly expressed by Hooker, will be recognized by all botanists. 



