ASA GRAY. 777 



bis hands for description. liiit (xray would have Ijocn nioiv than a col- 

 lector. He would have brou.<>ht back impressions, and, recalling the 

 charniino- narrative of the illustrious naturalist of the Bea(/le, we can 

 imagine the pleasure with which we should have read the journal of a 

 botanist, written with the delicate humor and the keen appreciation of 

 the beautiful and curious in nature which Asa Gray possessed. 



The study of the Wilkes i)lants, in which he was aided by Bentham's 

 large experience, gracefully acknowledged in his Memorial of Bentham 

 in the American Journal of Science of February, 1885, introduced him 

 to an exotic flora of large range. The work appeared in 1854 as a quarto 

 volume of nearly eight hundred pages, with an atlas of a hundred folio 

 plates. 



His first paper* on the distribution of plants appeared in the Ameri- 

 can Journal of Science of September, 1856, and was followed by two 

 other parts the next year. It bore the title of "Statistics of the Flora 

 of the northern United States," and was prepared at the time he was at 

 work on a second edition of the "Manual," partly in resi)onse to a re- 

 quest from Darwin for a list of American alpine plants. In this paper 

 he gave a general view of the characteristics of the North American 

 flora, with tables of species showing the extension of alpine plants and 

 the comparative distribution of Eastern and Western species, and their 

 relation to species of Europe and Asia, although he states that he must 

 defer making an extended comparison with the plants of northeastern 

 Asia until he has studied some recent collections from the northern 

 part of Japan. The most important conclusions reached in this paper 

 may be stated in bis own words: "All our strictly subalpine species 

 (with two exceptions), which are common to us and to Europe, extend 

 northward along the central region of the continent quite to the arctic 

 sea-coast, while curiously enough eleven, or one-third of our strictly 

 alpine species common to l^hiroi)e — all but one of them arctic in the 

 Old World — are not known to cross the arctic circle on this continent. 

 Tliis, however, might perhaps have been expected, as it seems almost 

 certain that the interchange of alpine species between us and Europe 

 must have taken place in the direction of Newfoundland, Labrador, and 

 Greenland rather than through the polar regions." Again: "The 

 special resemblance of our flora to that of Europe, it is clear, is not 

 owing simply either to the large proportion of genera in common, or 

 to anything striking or important in the few genera, nearly or quite 

 l)eculiar to the two. The latter, indeed, are insignificant in our flora 

 and not to be compared, as to any features they impart, with the much 

 more numerous and really characteristic genera which are shared by 

 tiie eastern United States and eastern temperate Asia. We must 



* III Jlic paper " On the Bot.iny of Japan," p. 442, Gray speaks of a paper on the dis- 

 tribution of plants in the American Journal of Science of an earlier date tlian the one 

 licrc mentioned, apparently the review of Siehold's Flora Japoniea, /. c. June 1840, 

 XXXIX, 175. 



