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 throuj^h all his communications 

 there is seeu the profound aud always delighted student, the accomplished 

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

 lovable mau."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; aud 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 chami)ion 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, aud 

 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 shouhl 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 1820-'27, after he had taken u]) medicine, gave the young 

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

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

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



* From the American Journal of Science, March I, 1888. Vol. xxxv. 



tin the preparation of this sketch I have heen much aided by tlie paper.s of Pro- 

 fessor Uoodale, Professor Sargent and Prol'. C R. Barnes, the last in the Botanical 

 Gazette for January 1, 18SG. 



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