594 



NATURE 



[April 19, 



ASA GRAY. 



THE following, as yet unpublished, words, almost the 

 last spoken publicly by Asa Gray, have a pathetic 

 interest for all those who knew and loved him. They 

 were uttered in the Free Trade Hall, at Manchester, at 

 the opening meeting of the British Association in August 

 last, in seconding the vote of thanks to Sir Henry Roscoe 

 for his address : — 



" For the very great honour of being called upon to 

 second the motion for a vote of thanks to your illustrious 

 President, I am mainly indebted to that deference which 

 is naturally accorded to advancing years, a deference 

 Avhich sometimes— as in the present case — takes one 

 unawares. 



' In looking back over the list of Corresponding Members 

 of the British Association, I find myself, much to my 

 surprise, nearly, if not quite, the oldest survivor. 



" I recognize, therefore, a certain fitness, on this score, 

 in the call upon me to be the spokesman of those, your 

 brethren from other lands, who have been invited to this 

 auspicious gathering, and to the privilege of listening to 

 the very thoughtful, well-timed, and most instructive 

 address of your President. 



" As guests, we desire, Mr. Mayor, heartily to thank the 

 city of Manchester and the officers of the Association 

 for inviting us ; we wish to thank you, Sir Henry, for the 

 gratification your address has afforded us. 



" Convened at Manchester, and coming myself by way 

 of Liverpool, I would say personally that there are two 

 names which memory calls up from the distant past with 

 unusual distinctness ; both names familiar to this audience 

 and well known over the world, but which now rise to my 

 mind in a very significant way. For I am old enough to 

 have taken my earliest lessons in chemistry just at the 

 time when the atomic theory of Dalton was propounded, 

 and was taught in the text-books as the latest new thing 

 in science. 



"Some years earlier, Washington Irving in his "Sketch- 

 book " had hallowed to our youthful minds the name of 

 Roscoe, making it the type of all that was liberal, wise, and 

 gracious. And when I came to know something of 

 botany I found that this exemplar, as well as patron, of 

 good learning had, by his illustrations of Monandrian 

 plants, taken rank among the Patres Conscripti of the 

 botany of that day. 



" The name so highly honoured then we now honour in 

 the grandson. And I am confident that I express the 

 sentiments of your foreign guests, whom I represent, 

 when I simply copy the words of your President in 1842, 

 now reproduced in the opening paragraph of the address 

 of the President of 1887, transferring, as we fitly may, 

 the application from the earlier to the later Manchester 

 chemist : ' Manchester is still the residence of one whose 

 name is uttered with respect wherever science is culti- 

 vated, who is here to-night to enjoy the honours due to a 

 long career of persevering devotion to knowledge.' 



" I cannot continue the quotation without material 

 change. ' That increase of years to him has been but 

 increase of wisdom ' may indeed be said of Roscoe no 

 less than of Dalton ; but we are happy to know that we 

 are now contemplating not the diminished strength of the 

 close, but the manly vigour of the mid-course, of a dis- 

 tinguished career. Long and prosperously may it grow 

 from strength to strength. 



" In general, praise of the address which we have had 

 the pleasure of hearing would not be particularly becoming 

 from one whose chemistry nearly ended as well as began 

 with the simple atomic theory of Dalton. But there is 

 one topic which I may properly speak of, standing as I 

 do as a representative of those favoured individuals whom 

 your programme— for lack of a better distinguishing word 

 —calls foreigners. I refer to the urgently expressed 

 * hope that this meeting may be the commencement of an 



international scientific organization.' For this we thank 

 you, Mr. President, most heartily. This is, indeed, a con- 

 summation devoutly to be wished, and confidently to be 

 hoped for, by all of us, especially by those for whom I am 

 speaking. Not only we Americans, who are of British 

 descent, and who never forget that blood is thicker than 

 water, but as well our Continental associates on this plat- 

 form, of the various strains of blood which interfused have 

 produced this English race and fitted it for its noble 

 issues— we, each and all, I repeat, accept this name of 

 foreigners only in the conventional sense which the im- 

 perfection of language imposes. In the forum of science 

 we ignore it altogether. One purpose unifies and 

 animates every scientific mind with 'one divine intent,' 

 and that by no means the ' far-off intent ' of which the 

 poet sings, but one very near and pervading. So we took 

 to heart the closing words of your President's most 

 pertinent and timely address. Indeed, we had taken them 

 to heart in anticipation. And we have come to this 

 meeting one hundred strong or more (in place of the 

 ordinary score) fully bent upon making this Manchester 

 meeting international. 



" Far back in my youthful days there was a strong- 

 willed President of the United States, of mihtary 

 antecedents, who once drew up and promulgated an 

 official order which somewhat astounded his Cabinet 

 officers. ' Why, Mr. President ! ' they said, ' you can't 

 do that.' ' Can't do it ! ' replied General Jackson, * don't 

 you see that I have done it ? ' And so we internationals 

 have come and done it. I am the unworthy spokesman 

 of such a numerous, and such a distinguished array of 

 scientific foreigners as have never been assembled before. 



" Next year, if you will, you shall have as many more. 

 When you, too, are ready to cross the Channel or the 

 North Sea, we shall compose only a larger scientific 

 brotherhood. And when you cross again the Atlantic, the 

 brotherhood of science will be the more increased, and 

 its usefulness in proportion. 



" In behalf of your foreign guests, I heartily second the 

 motion." 



NOTES. 

 Fifteen years have passed since the Marshall Hall Fund 

 was instituted with the twofold purpose of commemorating the 

 late Dr. Marshall Hall, and for the encouragement of research 

 in that branch of natural science which he did so much to de- 

 velop. The Trust provides "that a prize shall be given every 

 fifth year for the best original work done and recorded in the 

 English language during the previous quinquennium, in physio- 

 logical or pathological researches relating to the nervous system, 

 and that the prize shall consist of the simple interest derived 

 during the preceding five years from the amount of the capital 

 fund." The first award was made to Dr. Hughlings Jackson, 

 the second to Dr. Ferrier, and this year the Council of the 

 Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, in whose hands the 

 Fund was placed, have awarded the prize to Dr. Walter Hol- 

 brook Gaskell, F. R. S, , Lecturer in Advanced Physiology in 

 the University of Camln-id^e. The Council have invited Dr. 

 Gaskell to give some account of his work before the Society, 

 and a special meeting will be convened for this purpose. 



Mr. Matthew Arnold, the tidings of whose death excited 

 universal regret, did admirable service to the cause of education 

 in England. No writer of his time pressed more earnestly on 

 the attention of the public the need of thorough educational 

 reform, and in his full and lucid Report on the Universities and 

 secondary schools of the Continent he showed how far, in almost 

 all matters relating to this essential element of the national 

 life, we had allowed ourselves to be outstripped by some of mir 

 neighbours and rivals. Although, of course, convinced that 



