774 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS. 



surgeon's knife, aimed not to wound, but to curej and if he sometimes 

 felt it his duty to be severe, he never failed to praise what was worthy. 

 The number of his reviews and notices written during his connection 

 with the American Journal of Science as editor and assistant editor for 

 over thirty years, and for the North American Eeview, the Nation, the 

 Atlantic Monthly, aud numerous other journals, is enormous, and it 

 almost seems as if he must have written notices of the greater j^art of all 

 the botanical works he had ever read. Those intimately acquainted 

 with him more than half believed that he was able to write good notices 

 of books written in languages which he could not read. He was able, 

 as if by instinct, to catch the spirit and essence of what he read, without 

 any exertion on his part. One who wrote so much might have become 

 monotonous. But he was never prosy, and his style was so easy and 

 flowing, and so constantly enlivened by sprightly allusions and pleasing 

 metaphors, that one could read what he wrote for the mere pleasure of 

 the reading. His was one of the rare cases where Science had appro- 

 priated to herself one who would have been an ornament to any purely 

 literary profession. 



It would be presumption were we to express an opinion on the posi- 

 tion of Gray as a scientific botanist. Fortunately for us, it is unnec- 

 essary. The greatest living systematic botanist, Sir J. D. Hooker, the 

 one by his attainments aud position fitted above all others to speak 

 with authority on the subject, has already recorded his opinion in the 

 following words : 



When the history of the progress of botany during the nineteenth 

 century shall be written, two names will hold high positions : those of 

 Prof. Augustin Pyrame De Candolle and of Prof. Asa Oray. - - - 

 Each devoted half a century of unremitting labor to the investigation 

 and description of the plants of continental areas, and they founded 

 herbaria and libraries, each in his own country, which have become per- 

 manent and quasi-national institutions. - - - There is much in 

 their lives and works that recalls the career of Linnaeus, of whom they 

 were worthy disciples, in the comi)rehensiveness of their labor, the ex- 

 cellence of their methods, their judicious conception of the limits of 

 genera and species, the terseness and accuracy of their descriptions, 

 and the clearness of their scientific language. 



The accuracy of the resemblance of Gray and De Candolle, so admi- 

 rably and justly expressed by Hooker, will be recognized by all botan- 

 ists. Gray was the De Candolle of America, whose mission it was to 

 bring together the scattered and crude works of the earlier explorers 

 and botanists and the vast unwrought material of his owni day, and to 

 combine them with his surpassing skill into one grand comprehensive 

 work which should fitly describe the flora of a continent. But while 

 recognizing the resemblance between De Candolle and Gray in their 

 mode of work and the purpose for w hich they strove, we can only mar 

 vel how it was possible for a poor farmer's boy in America, without a 

 university education, to become the peer of one of Europe's best trained 

 botanists. 



