376 



'NATURE 



\:Feb.i6, rS8'8 



contribution to science is a paper, by G. B. Crawe and 

 himself, on the mineralogy of Jefferson and St. Lawrence 

 Counties (N. Y.), in SillimarCs Journal ( 1 834, 346)~but they 

 soon gave place to botany, owing to his having attracted 

 the attention of Dr. John Torrey, State Botanist for New 

 York, and Professor of Chemistry and Botany, but prac- 

 tically of botany only, in the New York Medical College. 

 In 1833, Dr. Torrey made Gray his laboratory assistant, 

 a post he held for some months, during which he pre- 

 sented what was his first botanical paper to the Annals 

 of the New York Lyceum. This, which was on a very intri- 

 cate and much misunderstood group of American sedges 

 {Rhynchospord) showed Gray's acuteness as an observer, 

 and skill in systematizing, as clearly as anything he has 

 since written. In the following year he was appointed 

 Curator of the New York Lyceum, where he extended his 

 studies to the North American grasses and Cyperaceae, 

 and prepared his first botanical text-book, which was 

 pubhshed in 1836, under the title of " Elements of 

 Botany." The "Elements" is a noteworthy book; it 

 was at once accepted as the best that had appeared in 

 the States, and as second to ^none in the English lan- 

 guage ; its only rival was Lindley's " Introduction to the 

 Natural System of Botany," the first edition of which had 

 (in 1 831) been reprinted under Dr. Torrey's supervision 

 for the use of the American schools. 



Whilst still attached to the New York Lyceum, Gray 

 accepted the appointment of naturalist to Capt. Wilke's 

 South Pacific Exploring Expedition, which was then 

 being fitted out ; but after two years' delay, and the cur- 

 tailment of the opportunities for research that were to 

 have been afforded him on the voyage, he threw up the 

 appointment. This result is much to be deplored, for no 

 young naturalist was ever better fitted by education, and 

 by training as an observer and collector, to have taken 

 advantage of the splendid opportunities which that 

 expedition afforded. 



Having relinquished the prospect of Pacific explora- 

 tion, Dr. Gray was invited by his friend Dr. Torrey to 

 co-operate with him in the preparation of a flora of the 

 North American Continent ; and into this work, which 

 became the leading object of his scientific life, he eagerly 

 entered. At the same time he accepted the Chair of 

 Botany in the University of Michigan, subject to the con- 

 dition of being allowed a year's leave to be passed in 

 Europe for the purpose of verifying the nomenclature of 

 the American flora by a study of the species of which the 

 types existed only in European herbaria. This was in 

 1838, and his first visit was to Glasgow, where the then 

 ■ Professor of Botany (Sir W. Hooker) was engaged on a 

 flora of British North America, under the auspices of 

 the Secretary of State for the Colonies. After a long 

 sojourn in Glasgow, Dr. Gray visited the principal 

 herbaria in London, France, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, 

 -and Prussia, making life-long friendships with scientific 

 men of all pursuits wherever he went ; his letters of intro- 

 duction, coupled with his bright intelligence, genial dis- 

 position, and charming personality, giving him the entree 

 •to salons as well as to the museums of every capital. This 

 was the first of seven visits that Dr. Gray paid to Europe, 

 and of which the last was concluded a very few weeks 

 before his fatal illness. 



On his return to America in 1839, Dr. Gray resided at 

 New York, when the first volume of the flora of North 

 America was completed, in conjunction with Dr. Torrey, 

 and the second, elaborated wholly by himself, was begun, 

 but not completed till 1843. In the meantime (in 1842) 

 he had been appointed by the Fellows of Harvard College, 

 Cambridge, Fisher Professor of Natural History, the 

 duties of which Chair were restricted to an annual 

 course of lectures on botany, and the charge of the 

 College Botanical Gardens, to which an official residence 

 is attached. This was his home for the rest of his life, 

 and here, with funds partly derived fromthe College, and 



partly from private sources, largely supplemented by 

 interchanges of specimens and books, he founded the 

 Harvard Herbarium and Library. 



The great desideratum for the conduct of Dr. Gray's 

 new duties was a much fuller class-book of botany than 

 the " Elements " of 1836, and in the same year he com- 

 pleted the first edition of his " Botanical Text-book." In 

 this the subject-matter is divided into two parts, one 

 devoted to structural and physiological botany, the other 

 to the principles of systematic botany, including chapters 

 upon plants useful to man. This was the first of a series of 

 editions of a work that has been for nearly half a century the 

 text-book of schools and colleges throughout the United 

 States, and the latter issues of which have been generally 

 recommended by the botanical professors of the United 

 Kingdom as the best of its class. In 1880 the first volume 

 of the sixth edition appeared, but the advances in botanical 

 science made since the fifth was published, quite a 

 quarter of a century before, had been so many and great 

 that the amount of matter which this sixth will contain is 

 quadruple that of the fifth. It will be when complete 

 a co-operative work in four volumes. The first is by Gray 

 himself, and is devoted to morphology, taxonomy, and 

 phytography ; the second, by Prof Goodale, Gray's able 

 successor in the Fisher Professorship, includes vegetable 

 histology and physiology ; the third, by Prof Farlow, 

 will treat on Cryptogams ; and the fourth, which Dr. Gray 

 reserved for himself, was intended to be occupied by the 

 classification of Phaenogams, their special morphology, 

 distribution, and products. Gray's other educational works 

 are : " Lessons in Botany and Vegetable Physiology," 

 somewhat on the plan of Lindley's " School Botany," but 

 much fuller ; also two smaller works, that for charm of 

 matter and style have no equal in botanical literature — 

 "How Plants Grow," and "How Plants Behave" — they 

 rival chapters in Kirby and Spence's introduction to 

 entomology in instruction and interest ; and lastly, " Field, 

 Forest, and Garden Botany." 



The great outcomes of Gray's labours in systematic 

 botany are his works on the flora of North America, from 

 the Arctic islands to Mexico, and from the Atlantic to the 

 Pacific Ocean. In one form or another these embrace a 

 great proportion of the 10,000 or 12,000 species which that 

 continent is supposed to contain. More than half are in- 

 cluded in the two volumes published. in conjunction with 

 Torrey, and in his " Synoptical Flora," of which two parts 

 are published, and in his " Manual of the Botany of the 

 Northern States." The remainder are described or men- 

 tioned in more or less detail in multitudes of detached 

 papers, and especially in memoirs upon collections made 

 by naturalists attached to the many Expeditions organized 

 by the Government for the exploration of railway routes 

 across the continent, and" By" 'coire"cfofs'"an3^p!^vate in- 

 dividuals in previously unexplored regions. It was the 

 hope of their author that the publication of these collec- 

 tions would have accelerated the completion of the general 

 flora, and such would have been the case had their author 

 lived ; but as it is, the stars have in great measure 

 obscured the planet, for one of the greatest obstacles to 

 the study of North American plants is the multitude of 

 these detached memoirs, with complicated titles, in which 

 so many genera and species are to this day buried. 

 If the great work cannot be continued, as it is to be hoped 

 it may be, by Dr. Gray's most competent herbarium 

 keeper, Sereno Watson, it is most desirable that the con- 

 tents of these memoirs should be reduced to a systematic 

 form with the least possible delay. 



Next to the synoptical flora, Dr. Gray's most original 

 work is his " Genera Florae Boreali-Americana Orientalis," 

 which was intended to contain descriptions, with figures, 

 of every genus of the Eastern States, with discussions 

 upon their affinities, morphology, and distribution. Only 

 two volumes had appeared when want of funds decreed 

 its eiid. As a. fragment it is unique,, and had it but been 



