346 Ohituary Notices. [sess. lit. 



Professor Asa Geay. By Andrew Taylor. 



^Read 10th May 1888.) 



We are called again to remoYe from the list of our Foreign 

 Honorary Fellows one who, like seYeral of liis European 

 coiifrercs pre\iously deleted from our roll of honour, founded 

 a great national botanic garden, with herbarium and library, 

 and who, too, was known in both continents as an academic 

 teacher, as well as the author of popular text-books. Asa 

 Gray died on 30th January 1888, at the ripe age of 78, in 

 Cambridge, Mass., after a lingering paralytic attack. As 

 he had pre\aously requested, a choir of boys sang, in the 

 University chapel at his funeral, stanzas in meet accord 

 with his long-known devout Christian practice. The closing 

 verse may indicate their import : — 



" Thy light upon our evening pour, 

 So may our souls no sunset see ; 

 But death to us an open door 

 To an eternal morning be. " 



Dr Gray had, at recurrent intervals, visited European 

 Botanic Gardens, our own included, in the prosecution of his 

 life-work. His striking individuality, — a thin, wiry figure, 

 brimming over even in old age with cheerful energy for 

 work, — had impressed botanists of the Old World as much 

 as those of America. So, when the telegraph flashed the 

 news of his departure, a wave of profound sympathy spread 

 amongst his brother scientists to her who had been a help- 

 meet in his home and woik for forty years. 



JJorn in Paris, Oneida Co., N.Y., in 1810, Gray for a while 

 assisted in his father's tannery. The perusal of the article 

 " Botany," in Brewster's Edinbunjh Eneycloiicdia, incited 

 the youth to cea.se feeding tlie liark-mill in order to study 

 medicine, which, like many a similar tyro desirous of an 

 " open sesame " to the natural sciences, he never practised. 

 At twenty lie obtaincil tli(i friendshi]) ol Profes.sor John 

 Ton-ey of New York, and became his assistant in 1833, tlms 

 early entering on his special botanical career. For a while 

 curator of the Lyceum of Natural History, New York, he 

 became Fisher l*rofessor of Natural History at Harvard 



