148 THE RETROSPECT OF THE YEAR. 



to be a great loss to the country. They have so long been 

 leaders, each in his particular way, that it seems as if we 

 were now left without a guide to direct us in systematic 

 natural history. By me, personally, their deaths are 

 deeply felt, for it has been my honor to count them as 

 friends who guided me in youth and who, in recent years, 

 at a time of great trial, in a matter they well understood, 

 took a firm stand for justice and for what they believed to 

 be right ; and, as they acted in my case, so have they in 

 many others. 



Always true to the high principles of their lives, they 

 have ever been ready to work for justice towards others. 

 It is this nobleness and kindness in their characters 

 that have made them so much loved by the hundreds of 

 younger naturalists with whom they were brought into in- 

 timate relations. As would be expected of two such men, 

 they were early brought together and continued through 

 life in the closest ties, bound by mutual regard and deep- 

 est afl'ection. 



We all know of Professor Gray's gentle loving char- 

 acter ; of his great work in systematic botany ; of the im- 

 mense influence he has exerted as a teacher of nature's 

 laws as shown in the vegetable kingdom ; of the volumes 

 he has published and their far-reaching results ; how his 

 text-books and manuals have been the means of inducing 

 thousands of young men and women to study nature and 

 her laws ; we know of the great herbarium he has founded, 

 the Mecca of all American botanists ; and of his masterly 

 presentation of the great laws by which nature has spread 

 flowers and trees over the land, and of the classical me- 

 moir on the "Botany of Japan." We know too of his 

 position in the great discussion on evolution, and how 

 clearly he presented the views of his friend Darwin, and 



