OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 417 



always existed between him and the directors of the Royal Gardens at 

 Kew, Sir William J. Hooker, Sir Joseph D. Hooker, and the present 

 director, Mr. W. T. Thistleton Dyer, and to their generous sharing of the 

 wealth of specimens continually coming in to them from all parts of the 

 British Empire and from elsewhere, and to his like friendly relations 

 with Russian botanists, from whom have come large collections from 

 Central and Eastern Asia. But it is in the richness of its American 

 collections that the great value of the Gray Herbarium to the Ameri- 

 can botanist lies. In the possession of typical specimens it stands 

 unrivalled, including as it does the fullest sets of the collections of 

 Fendler, Lindheimer, Wright, Hall, Parry, Bolander, Brewer, Palmer, 

 Pringle, and others, the basis of many of Dr. Gray's classical papers, 

 and procured often by a costly outlay of time and labor in their de- 

 termination. It has also large sets of the collections made upon the 

 Government Pacific Railroad Surveys, the Mexican Boundary Survey, 

 and Geological Surveys, and very many specimens from collectors in 

 British America and the Canadian Government Surveys, and from 

 Greenland, Arctic America, and Alaska from various sources. It is 

 enriched, moreover, with his determinations and notes, and with his 

 memoranda upon the types of early species and the specimens of early 

 collectors which have been examined by himself at various times in 

 the herbaria at Kew, London, Paris, Madrid, Geneva, Berlin, Munich, 

 Vienna, and elsewhere. In short, the Herbarium has become what Dr. 

 Gray endeavored to make it, a mass of material fit to form the basis for 

 a Flora of North America. 



That Flora he labored upon for years, but left incomplete. Finis 

 coronat opus. The crown of a finished life-work it was not permitted 

 him to wear. But his monument is the Gray Herbarium, that makes' 

 completion still possible. The care of this Herbarium and its Li 

 brary Harvard University has assumed ; and Harvard University may 

 be trusted, in honor of the man who has been its high honor, to main- 

 tain their integrity and pre-eminence, and to perpetuate, so far as 

 possible, that high grade of botanical work and research of which they 

 have hitherto been the main centre in America, and for which alone 

 they have been created. 



The resolutions were adopted by a unanimous vote. 



Professor William G. Fallow then read a biographical notice 

 of Dr. Gray, which had. been prepared at the request n\' the 

 Council, and is printed with the Report of the Council in Vol. 

 XXIII. of these Proceedings. 



VOL. XXIV. (s. S. XVI.) 27 



