A MEMOIR OF ASA GRAY.* 



By James D. Dana. 



Our friend and associate, Asa Gray, the eminent botanist of America, 

 the broad-minded student of nature, ended his life of unceasing and 

 fruitful work on the 30th of January last (1888). For thirty-five 

 years he has been one of the editors "of this Journal, and for more than 

 fifty years one of its contributors ; and through all his communications 

 there is seen the profound and always delighted student, the accomplished 

 writer, the just and genial critic, and, as Darwin has well said, "the 

 lovable man."t 



Asa Gray was born on the 18th day of November, 1810, at Sauquoit, 

 in the township of Paris, Oneida County, New York, a place 9 miles 

 south of Utica. When a few years old his father moved to Paris 

 Furnace, and established there a tannery; and the child, one account 

 says, was put to work feeding the bark-mill and driving the horse, and 

 another, riding the horse that ground the bark. "At six or seven he 

 was a champion speller in the numerous 'matches' that enlivened the 

 district school." At the age of eleven, nearly twelve, he was sent to 

 the grammar school at Clinton, where he remained for two years, and 

 the following year to the Fairfield Academy, both of the schools places 

 where all the classics and mathemetics were taught that were required 

 for entering the colleges of the land. But his instruction was cut short 

 by his father's desire that he should enter the Fairfield Medical School. 

 This school, of high repute, was established at that place in 1812 as 

 the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the Western District 

 of New York. Dr. James Hadley was the professor of chemistry and 

 materia medica, and his lectures of 1825-'26, while Gray was in the 

 academy, and 182G-'27, after he had taken up medicine, gave the young 

 student his first instruction in science. During the following winter at 

 Fairfield, that of 1827-'28, the article on Botany in the Edinburgh 

 Encyclopaedia attracted young Gray's attention, and excited his interest 



* From the Aoierican Journal of Science, March 1, 1888. Vol. xxxv. 



tin the preparation of this sketch 1 have been much aided by the papers of Pro- 

 fessor fJoodale, Professor Sargent and Prof. C. R. Barne.s, the last in the Botanical 

 Gazette for January 1, 1886. 



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