ASA GRAY. 771 



at firist sufficed, but at last it becauie necessary to provide a special 

 laboratory aud lecture-room at the garden. A liberal friend of Dr. 

 Gray aad the college presented a sum of money for this purpose, and 

 in 1872 a wing was added to the herbarium. About this time the de- 

 maud for laboratory instruction and equipment increased rapidly, and 

 the new lecture-room and laboratory were soon found to be inadequate 

 to meet the needs of the increasing calls for microscopic and physio- 

 logical work, and they were at length abandoned. It is not surprising 

 that Dr. Gray could not foresee how great the growth in this direction 

 was to be even in his own life. Probably no person of his age could 

 have foreseen it. 



His herbarium was, at one period or another, the resort ot nearly all 

 the active working botanists of the country, and thither came many 

 young men who were afterwards to aid in the development of botanical 

 studies in the United States. His intercourse with them was always 

 free and unrestrained by formalities of any kind, and he seemed more 

 like a learned friend than a teacher. Passing to and fro from his own 

 study to the herbarium he greeted all cordially, watching and criticising 

 sharply but good-naturedly the work that was going on. ISIo one en- 

 enjoyed a hearty laugh more than he, and every now and then he would 

 brighten the work by some anecdote from the large stock which his re- 

 tentive memory ever had at hand ; always however for the purpose of 

 emphasizing some point or illustrating some fact which he wished to 

 bring out more clearly, but never allowing the attention of those about 

 him to be distracted from their work. Life at the herbarium was in- 

 deed a pleasure, aud the more serious work was well seasoned and 

 spiced in the days when the agile assistant, Charles Wright, skipped 

 about like a squirrel, his diminutive body in Cambridge, his larger mind 

 wandering away in his beloved Cuba and the Pacific islaiuls, — when 

 Brewer, less continent than his teacher in the matter of anecdote, saw in 

 every plant before him some episode of his own life in camp. The ap- 

 proach of Dr. Gray, heralded by his cheery laugh, or perhaps by a 

 mild anathema agaiust the gardener, who every morning, regardless of 

 the intentions of nature, deluged the cacti placed in the corridor, we all 

 understood to meau business, for, if joking was allowed, trifling was not. 

 Wo learned something about botanists as well as about botany, and 

 often wondered whether Robert Brown were really as great as he was 

 represented ; and, on the rare occasions of a visit from a man like Dr. 

 Torrey or Dr. Engelnuinn, we asked ourselves whether there was any 

 chance that the younger generation of botanists would bear any com- 

 parison with the older. None who have worked under Dr. Gray at the 

 herbarium will forget the deep personal interest he always manifested 

 in their work and future prospects. He always encouraged and stimu- 

 lated without holding out false hoj)es. To those who wished to devote 

 thenjselves to botany in the years still recent, when it was scar(;ely 

 possible for a botanist to live by botany alone, he used to say : " Study 



