380 



GRAY, ASA. 



ment, established June 27, 1884, was erected 

 into a department, " the general design and 

 duties of which shall be to acquire and diffuse 

 among the people of the United States useful 

 information on subjects connected with labor, 

 in the most general and comprehensive sense 

 of that word, and especially upon its relations 

 to capital, hours of labor, the earnings of la- 

 boring men and women, and the means of pro- 

 moting their material, social, intellectual, and 

 moral .prosperity." Until the complete organi- 

 zation of the department has been effected, 

 the condition of the bureau remains the same. 

 The number of employes under the legal or- 

 ganization is 64. 



Closely connected with the above-named 

 departments are : 



The United States Civil-Service Commission. Offi- 

 ces in City Hall building; established Jan. 16, 

 1883, " to regulate and improve the civil-serv- 

 ice of the United States." The commissioners 

 receive salaries of $3,500 each ; the Chief Ex- 

 aminer, $3,000. Examinations are held for 

 places in the departmental, customs, and postal 

 services in every State and Territory of the 

 Union. 



Government Printing - Office. This establish- 

 ment is at the corner of North Capitol and H 

 Streets, Washington. The total number of 

 emploves is 2,038. The Public Printer has a 

 salary of $4,500. 



One officer of the Department of Justice, and 

 one medical officer from the army, navy, and 

 Marine Hospital Service, respectively, are de- 

 tailed to the National Board of Health, estab- 

 lished March 3, 1879. 



GRAY, ASA, botanist, born in Paris, N. Y., 

 Nov. 18, 1810; died in Cambridge, Mass., Jan. 

 30, 1888. He was descended from a Scotch- 

 Irish family, who emigrated to this country in 

 the early part of the last century, and in 1795 

 his grandfather settled in the Sanquoit val- 

 ley. When a boy he fed the bark-mill and 

 drove the horse of his father's tannery ; but, 

 as he showed a greater fondness for study 

 than for farm-work, his father sent him to the 

 Clinton Grammar School. In 1825 lie entered 

 Fail-field Academy, where he spent four years, 

 and his first interest in botany was aroused by 

 reading on that subject in Brewster's "Edin- 

 burgh Encyclopedia." A story is told of his 

 eager watching for the first spring beauty in 

 the spring of 1828, which, by the aid of Amos 

 Eaton's " Manual of Botany," he found to be 

 the Olaytonia Virginica. Owing to the wishes 

 of his father, and probably his own inclina- 

 tion, he entered himself as a student at the 

 Medical College of the Western District of New 

 York in Fairfield, Herkimer County, and in 

 1831 he was graduated at that institution. 

 The sessions were short, and the remainder of 

 his time was spent in study with physicians 

 in the vicinity. His leisure was occupied in 

 gathering an herbarium, and he began a cor- 

 respondence with Dr. Lewis C. Beck and Dr. 

 John Torrey, who aided him in the determina- 



tion of his plants. He never entered upon the 

 practice of medicine, but, on receiving his de- 

 gree, became instructor in chemistry, mineral- 

 ogy, and botany in Bartlett's High School in 

 Utica, N. Y., where lie was an instructor from 

 1831 till 1835. In 1832 he gave a course of 

 lectures on botany at the Fairfield Medical 

 School, and in 1834 he delivered a course on 

 mineralogy and botany at Hamilton College, 

 Clinton, N. Y. During the year 1833-'34, 

 he was assistant to John Torrey, then Pro- 



ASA GRAY. 



fessor of Chemistry and Botany at the Col- 

 lege of Physicians and Surgeons in New 

 York city, but that institution could not 

 afford to retain his services, and in 1836, 

 through the efforts of Dr. Torrey, he was 

 made curator of the New York Lyceum of 

 Natural History. Dr. Gray's earliest papers 

 in botany "A Monograph of the North 

 American Rhyncospora3 " ami " A Notice of 

 Some New, Rare, or Otherwise Interesting 

 Plants from the Northern and Western Por- 

 tions of the State of New York " were read 

 before the Lyceum in December, 1834, and 

 in 1836 his first text -book, "Elements of 

 Botany," was published in New York. This 

 volume, with various revisions, was widely 

 adopted in schools and academies, and for a 

 long time was almost the only text-book on 

 botany in popular use. 



In 1836 Dr. Gray was appointed botanist of 

 the exploring expedition to the South Pacific, 

 under Capt. Charles Wilkes, but, owing to the 

 delay in the starting of the expedition, he re- 

 signed that place in 1838. Meanwhile, he be- 

 came actively associated with Dr. Torrey in 

 the preparation of the " Flora of North Ameri- 

 ca," Parts I and II of the first volume of which 

 were issued in July and October, 1838; and in 

 November of that year he sailed for Europe to 

 consult the various herbaria that contained 

 large numbers of American plants made by 

 foreign collectors. He visited England, Scot- 

 land, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and 



