772 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS. 



medicine, and if you then still want to be a botanist, go ahead. Your 

 medicine will keep your botany from starving." 



Great as was the direct influence of Dr. Gray upon the students with 

 whom he came in contact, his influence on the development of botany 

 in this country through the medium of his numerous text-books and 

 manujils was even more important. His first textbook, " Elements of 

 Botany," written when he was only twenty-six years old, shows many 

 of tlie best characteristics of bis later works, being written in a 

 smooth, graceful style, with the different topics clearly and methodically 

 arranged. The vigorous defense of the natural system of classifica- 

 tion, which now appears superfluous, indicates that the author of 183G 

 was a progressive young man, who had shaken off the conservatism 

 which prevailed among American botanists of that period. That he 

 was young and inexperienced is occasionally shown, as in the amusing 

 statement tbat "the herbarium of a diligent botanist will ])ass so fre- 

 quently under his observation that any very extensiveravages [by insects] 

 can hardly take place without his being aware of it in time to cbeck the 

 progress of the destroyers." He evidently had no conception of how 

 large his own collection would become in a few years. 



The "Elements" of 1836 developed into the "Botanical Text-Book" 

 of 1842, in which the portion relating to systematic botany was much 

 more fully treated than in the earlier volume. The latter editions, 

 which appeared at intervals until 1879, are familiar to every one, for 

 they have been the means of opening the world of botany to more than 

 one generation of American botanists. In 1868 the "Lebrbucnder 

 Botanik, " by Sachs, appeared. That work was a genuine revelation, 

 showing the advance which had been made by experts in the science 

 of botany, and, although somewhat above the capacity of the common 

 student, it was destined to produce in a few years a revolution in the 

 method of botanical instruction. 



Recognizing the new era which had opened in botany, Dr. Gray re- 

 vised the plan of the " Text-Book," with a view of bringing it into accord 

 with the more widely developed science of the day, and in 1871) issued 

 the first volume of the revised work, in which he included the Mor- 

 phology of Phasnogams, Taxonomy, and Phytography, thus covering 

 the greater part of the ground of the original " Text-Book," intrusting 

 to his colleague. Professor Goodale, the volume on Physiological Bot- 

 any, (which appeared in 1885— a worthy companion of its predecessor,) 

 and to the writer the volume on Cryptogams, He hoped, but hardly 

 could have expected, to write a fourth volume, on the Orders of Phse- 

 nogamous Plants. It is deeply to be regretted that he was never able 

 to write this volume, for it would have enabled him to present the gen- 

 eral views on classification derived from a long and exceptionally rich 

 experience. No better text-book on the subject had ever been written 

 in the English langnage than Gray's "Text-llook" in the original form; 

 and, although botanical instruction is now very (iiflerent from what it 



