VOL. IV.] The Last Letter of Dr. Gray. 373 



By a corollary of the rule that priority of publication fixes the name, taken 

 along with the fact a plant-name is of two parts, generic and specific, it 

 follows that in any case Conioseliuum Canadense is the prior name for 

 those who hold to the genus Conioseliuum. I have laid down what I take 

 to be the correct view as to this, in my "Structural Botany," paragraph 

 794, where it is si:pported by the high authority of Bentham. I believe it 

 is more and more acceded to by the most competent judges. There are 

 those who make transpositions of divorced halves of plants' names, and who 

 also make the law of priority mechanically override other equally valid 

 laws without regard to sense. To such the old law maxim of the elder De 

 Candolle was applied — sumDuini jus, sitmma injuria. If you like to adopt 

 their ideas, you have at hand a still older, the very oldest, name, namely 

 Conioselinum Chiuense, for I can certify that the plant we are concerned 

 with is Athamantha Chinensis of Linnaeus. Very truly yours, 



Asa Grav. 



The following comments from the Journal of Botany (London), 

 may be of interest. 



[" In this Journal 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 LeUers of Asa 

 Gray, just issued by Messrs. Macmillan, contains the document in full, and 

 we here reproduce it. 



"The circumstances connected with its writing and subsequent non- 

 publication require to be stated: That Asa Gray was willing it should be 

 published, the letter itself makes clear; that he considered it important is 

 plain from the passage in the Letters which introduces it: 'On Sunday 

 [Nov. 27] his pulse and temperature had improved so much that he was 

 allowed to get up and go down-stairs at noon, the doctor congratulating 

 him on the success of the treatment. There seemed a weakness of the 

 right hand, which, however, passed away, and he wrote that evening the 

 letter to Dr. Britton, which follows, and when remonstrated with for making 

 the exertion said ' it was important, and must be written.' He died on the 

 2d of the following February.' 



" Mankind has always attached a special interest to the last utterances of 

 great men, and it might have been supposed that Dr. Britton would have 

 hastened to avail himself of the permission expressly given by the writer 

 to publish in his Bulletin 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. 

 Sereno Watson, in his last illness, dictated for the Botanical Gazette some 

 remarks 'On Nomenclature,' which appeared in that journal for June, 1892, 

 and 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. 



