Feb. 1 6. 1888] 



NATURE 



Z77 



completed it would have been of great morphological 

 value. To have done this would, however, have required 

 more than the ten volumes that were regarded when the 

 work was commenced as sufficient to complete it, and this 

 independently of the Cryptogams. 



Nor was Dr. Gray's all closet work: he diligently collected 

 and observed over a considerable area of his native 

 continent ; along the Altantic coast from Canada to 

 Florida ; in the prairie and Rocky Mountain regions 

 from Wyoming to the borders of New Mexico ; in the 

 great basin of Utah and Nevada ; and along the Pacific 

 coast from Oregon to St. Barbara. 



With two notable exceptions, Dr. Gray confined his 

 descriptive work to North American botany. These 

 exceptions were : one, the fragmentary botany of 

 Wilkes's South Pacific Exploring Expedition, with the 

 execution of which he was intrusted, but which came to 

 an end before it was half finished, for want of funds it is 

 believed, after the publication of one quarto volume with 

 a superb atlas of plates ; the other is a memoir on the 

 flora of Japan, founded chiefly on the collections made 

 in that country by the United States North Pacific 

 Exploring Expedition, which in point of originality and 

 far-reaching results was its author's opus magnum. By a 

 comparison of the floras of Japan with those of Eastern 

 and Western America, and of these with one another, and 

 all with the Tertiary floras of the Northern States, he 

 drew in outline the history of the vegetation of the north 

 temperate hemisphere in relation to its geography, from 

 the Cretaceous period to the present time. It is a brilliant 

 generalization, bearing the unmistakable stamp of genius. 



It remains to allude to Gray's admirable defence of the 

 doctrine of " the origin of species by natural selection," 

 of which he, as one of a favoured few, had been fully 

 informed by Darwin himself in 1857 ("Life and Letters," 

 ii. 120), before it appeared in the Linnean Journal. His 

 opinion, which was, from the first, cautiously favourable, but 

 with reserve, soon ripened into a conviction of the truth 

 of the principles involved. He alludes to it first in the 

 concluding remarks to his essay on the flora of Japan, 

 cited above, published in 1859, wherein he says that 

 he is " disposed to admit that closely related species may, 

 in many cases, be lineal descendants from a pristine 

 stock." Again, in a letter to Mr. Darwin, dated early in 

 July i860, speaking in terms of highest praise of the 

 " Origin," the following passages occur : — " The moment I 

 understood your premisses, I felt sure that you had a real 

 foundation to hold on. Well, if one admits your pre- 

 misses, I do not see how he is to stop short of your con- 

 clusions, as a probable hypothesis at least." And, referring 

 to his own review of it in Silliman's Journal (March 

 r86o),iie says :^»-" It naturally happens that my review of 

 your book does not exhibit anything hke the full force of 

 the impression the book has made upon me. Under the 

 circumstances, I suppose I do your theory more good 

 here by bespeaking for it a fair and favourable consider- 

 ation, and by standing non-committed as to its full con- 

 clusions, than I should if I announced myself a convert ; 

 nor could I say the latter with truth." It may be re- 

 marked here that just at this time a battle over species 

 was raging in America, of which but faint echoes reached 

 our shores. This was over the question of the single 

 or multiple origin of species by creation. Gray was the 

 champion of single creations, and, believing himself 

 strongly supported by theological considerations, may 

 well have felt that the further leap to evolution was one 

 into the dark. Be this as it may, for the five years fol- 

 lowing the publication of the " Origin," Gray devoted 

 himself to impressing upon the American public his 

 opinion of its extraordinary merits by reviews in weekly 

 and monthly periodicals, by lectures, and by discourses 

 at scientific Academies. Latterly (in 1876) he collected 

 many of these into a single volume which he en- 

 titled " Darwiniana." In it he defines his own posi- 



tion "as one who is scientifically, and in his own 

 fashion, a Darwinian, philosophically a convinced theist, 

 and religiously an acceptor of the ' creed commonly 

 called the Nicene,' as the exponent of the Christian 

 faith." From this position he never moved, and he sub- 

 sequently delivered two lectures in further exposition of 

 these views, at the Divinity School of Yale College, 

 These were published in 1880, under the title of" Science 

 and Religion." Finally, Mr. Darwin, whilst fully recog- 

 nizing the different stand-points from which he and Gray 

 took their departures, and their divergence of opinion in 

 some important matters, regarded him as the naturalist 

 who has most thoroughly gauged his work, and as a tower 

 of strength to himself and his cause. 



As a reviewer and bibliographer, Gray's labours must 

 have been Herculean, and they were uninterrupted for 

 nearly half a century. Even when on his travels in 

 Europe, he was in the habit of contributing scientific 

 notices to periodicals in the States. In 1836 he com- 

 menced writing reviews of botanical works, and notices of 

 botanists, travellers, and collectors for Silliman's Journal 

 of Science and Arts ; and this function he continued to 

 perform without intermission (latterly as a co-editor of 

 that important periodical) till within a few days of his last 

 illness. The number of these articles is truly astonishing, 

 as is the knowledge they display of all branches of botany,' 

 Phasnogamic and Cryptogamic. They are without exception 

 just, sober, and discriminating, critical rather than lauda- 

 tory, and eminently considerate in tone where censure is 

 necessary. A selection from these, many being discussions 

 full of original matter and suggestive observations, would 

 be an instructive and acceptable contribution to the 

 botanical literature of the century, and a meet tribute to 

 their author's merits and memory. 



Dr. Gray's figure and features were familiar in the 

 scientific circles of this country ; but for the information of 

 others it may be stated that he was of spare, wiry figure, 

 rather below the average height, his expression was keen 

 and vivacious, and his movements, like his intellect, alert. 

 He was a Foreign Fellow of the Royal and Linnean 

 Societies, a correspondent of the Institute of France, and 

 of the other Continental Academies, a Doctor of Laws of 

 Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh, and had served as 

 President of the American Academy of Arts and Science, 

 of the American Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, and as a Regent of the Smithsonian Institution. 

 Accompanied by Mrs. Gray he spent the summer of 1887 

 in Europe, chiefly in England, returning to Cambridge 

 in September. In October he went to Washington on the 

 affairs of the Smithsonian Institute. Soon after his 

 return, on the 28th of November, he was struck with para- 

 lysis, from which he never rallied, and he died at the end 

 of the following January. It is characteristic of him that 

 his last letter, written in pencil immediately before his 

 seizure to the contributor of these lines, was on the sub- 

 ject of a review for Silltman's Journal of Planchon's 

 " Review of the Vines." Dr. Gray married in 1848, Jane, 

 daughter of Judge Charles G. Loring, of Boston, who survives 

 him. He left no family. An excellent medallion likeness 

 of him in bronze was, on his seventy-fifth birthday, pre- 

 sented by his friends to Harvard College, Cambridge, U.S. 



J. D. H. 



NOTES. 

 On Tuesday evening a question was asked in the House of 

 Commons, by Mr. Howorth, about the new regulations for the 

 entrance examination at Woolwich. Mr. Howorth inquired 

 whether these regulations were final and permanent, or only 

 temporary. Mr. Stanhope, we regret to say, replied that the 

 regulations are intended to be of permanent application. If 

 that be so, it is the more necessary that a vigorous protest 

 against the scheme should be made by those who have any 



