4oS ■ Reviews. [zoe 



793. Ophioglossum nudicaule L — El Taste. 



791. Gymnogramme pedata Kaulfuss. — Near Mt. San 

 I^azaro. 



792. PELI..EA vSkinneri Hooker— Near Mt. San Lazaro. 



793. AsplEnium pitmilum Swartz. — Near Mt. vSan Lazaro. 



794. WoODWARDiA RADiCANS Smith. — I^a Chuparosa. 



795. Marsieta minuta Fonrnier. — San Jose del Cabo. Iden- 

 tified by L. F. Underwood. 



REVIEWS. 



Letters of Asa Gray — Edited by — Jane Loring Gray— in two 

 volumes — 1893 — Houghton, Mifflin & Co. " It has been my 

 aim, in collecting and arranging the ' Letters' from Dr. Gray's 

 large correspondence, to show as far as possible in his own words, 

 his life and his occupation. The greater part of the immense mass 

 of letters he wrote were necessarily purely scientific, uninterest- 

 ing except to the per.son addressed; so that manj'' of those 

 published are merelj^ fragments, and very few are given com- 

 pletely. I have made no attempt to estimate his scientific or 

 critical labors, for they are sufficiently before the world in various 

 printed works; but something of the personality of the man and 

 his many interests may be learned from these familiar letters and 

 from even the slight notes." 



From this prefatory note by Mrs. Gray the scope of these 

 letters is at once apparent. They make the reader acquainted 

 with the man, and sufficiently so with the student of plants to 

 make them indispensable to every American botanist. The 

 botanical letters of Gray are still to be hoped for in the future. 

 Nearly every contemporary botanist in America can furnish 

 treasured and most interesting letters from him but it may be 

 that they were intentionally withheld for the present, on 

 account of his well-known habit of expressing his views forcibly 

 and unreservedly concerning all botanical subjects discussed. 

 We reprint, by kind permission of Mrs. Gray, on page 372 pre- 

 ceding, the last letter written by Dr. Graj'. 



