XIV JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS. 



Board of Regeuts, his companions in scientific research, and the great 

 body of yonnger men who looked up to him as their master, have all 

 been made to realize that something has gone from the world which 

 can ill be spared, and that their own lives have lost a part of that which 

 made up their fullness. 



Upon the Smithsonian Institution his loss falls with particular 

 weight, since his active interest in its welfare is almost continuous with 

 its existence, for he was one of the Committee of the American Acad- 

 emy of Arts and Sciences, the report of which upon the " plan pro- 

 posed for the organization of the Smithsonian Institution," rendered in 

 1847, has exercised so active an influence upon the subsequent history 

 of this establishment. 



Appointed a Regent in January, 1871, to succeed Prof. Louis Agas- 

 siz, his efficient and active interest in the welfare of this Institution 

 has been one of its most valuable possessions, and it is with deeper 

 feeling than formal resolutions of regret unsually convey that we now 

 endeavor to express some part of our sense of irreparable loss. 



Dr. Gray's scientific reputation, while literally world-wide, was nat- 

 urally greatest in his own country, for it is he who has made the 

 botanical world acquainted with probably nearly three-fourths of the 

 forms that grow on this northern continent j and in this country, where 

 everything was referred to his Harvard Herbarium and to his judg- 

 ment and classification, as the final court of appeal, he occupied a 

 unique position as priest and pontiff of American botany. His botanical 

 labors are otherwise too lamiliar to need rehearsal here, but it is not 

 perhaps so generally known that he was an honored sponsor at the 

 birth of the Darwinian Theory. In this constant correspondence with 

 its illustrious author, Dr. Gray elicited the frequent expression of an 

 admiration as hearty as it was sincere; * and in Europe as well as in this 

 country our friend was recognized rather as the colleague than as the 

 disciple of the great English naturalist. 



As another distinguished botanist has said of him, in speaking on 

 this same subject, " Wherever it was known that Asa Gray saw noth- 

 ing sinister, nothing dangerous, in the teachings of Darwin, those 

 teachings were stripped of all their terrors. The impossibility that 

 such a man, so eminent in science, so clear in his conceptions, so pure 

 in his morals, and so steadfast in his faith, could pass judgment upon a 

 work that he had not thoroughly examined, or favor a doctrine that 

 could be productive of evil, was apparent to all who knew him, and to 

 the full extent of Dr. Gray's wide influence throughout the world, the 

 works of Charles Darwin were stricken from the index expur gator kis 

 and admitted into the family circle as safe books for all to read. 



Rather with the desire that a permanent record shall be made of the 



* "I said in a former letter that you were a lawyer, but I made gross mistake. I 

 am sure that you are a poet, — no, I will tell you what you are: a hybrid, a com- 

 plex cross of lawyer, poet, uaturalist, and theologian! Was there ever such a moij- 

 gter seea before ?" (Darwiu to Gray, September 10, I860.) 



