OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. Ill 



limits of the prescribed course. This generosity was accepted by many, 

 and most highly appreciated by them. It may be said that Dr. Gray 

 always maintained a deep interest in those who had availed themselves 

 of these special opportunities. 



It was, however, by his educational works that Dr. Gray was able to 

 exert a wider influence on botanical education than if he had confined 

 himself to the formal college instruction. The works of his educational 

 series are of three grades : 1st, for very young children ; 2d, for our 

 grammar schools ; 3d, for high schools and colleges. All of these 

 treatises are characterized by the perspicuous style with which you 

 are all familiar in his general writings. The style is never involved : 

 it is essentially French in its clearness. This is as true of his first 

 work, published when he was barely twenty-six, as of his last. 



Careful examination of all these many works shows that Dr. Gray's 

 constant endeavor was to lead the student to examine the plant, and not 

 the book, and thus to become self-reliant. 



It is worthy of note, that in his books prepared for children Dr. Gray 

 never writes down to them ; there is no air of condescension. The sub- 

 ject is developed under his charmed hand as naturally as foliage and 

 flowers unfold from buds. The same may be said of his books for the 

 higher grades. There is never any straining after a certain pedagogic 

 effect. Hence his works have an attraction even for those who have 

 little or no interest in Botany itself. Even Mr. Ruskin, in that pleas- 

 ing, and yet withal provoking, sketch entitled " Proserpina," has a kind 

 word to say for Asa Gray's Text-Book. 



One of the most remarkable things connected with Dr. Gray's series 

 is the fact that his Text-Book, now in its plan expanded into a four- 

 volume work, is laid down on substantially the same lines as his earliest 

 treatise, the " Elements." His earliest work is on the whole, however, 

 rather more dogmatic than the last. 



Perhaps no single subject treated of in these earliest and latest 

 works is of greater general interest than his presentation of the doc- 

 trine of species. One realizes, as he compares the first hook with the 

 last, how difficult it must have been to detect relationship, when one 

 felt at heart that there was no more real relationship between different 

 species than exists between the different sorts of trinkets in a toy-shop; 

 those of the same kind beinu reckoned of one kind because of their 

 shapes, size, substance, and the fact that they have been perhaps 

 turned out by the same machine. In his last treatise, relationship 

 among plants is recognized as true kinship ; allied plants are of com- 

 mon blood. And yet the transition from one view to the other is 



