212 LEADING AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



"The father was quick, decided, and an immense worker; from 

 him the son took his lively movements and his quick eagerness of 

 character, perhaps also his ready appreciation of fun. 



"The mother was a woman of singularly quiet and gentle char- 

 acter, with great strength and decision, and possessed a wonder- 

 ful power of accomplishing and turning off work; a woman of 

 thoughtful, earnest ways, conscientious and self -forgetting." 



There are some records of young Gray's precocity; for his 

 schooling is said to have begun when he was three years old; and 

 we are told that at six or seven he was a champion speller at the 

 numerous "spelling matches" that once furnished the chief excite- 

 ment of country neighborhoods. This was not bad training in 

 accuracy of observation and tenacity of memory, and both quali- 

 ties were later shown in high degree by the great botanist. 



Professor Gray was not "college- trained," and his formal ed- 

 ucation would be regarded now as vague and irregular and not 

 very effective; and yet, even in purity and felicity of literary expres- 

 sion, which is often supposed to belong peculiarly to university 

 culture, he was not surpassed. If the best that formal education 

 can do is to make self-education possible, Gray needed no more 

 / of it than he received. He was one of many strong men,^fuUjo 

 / initiative, who develop in spite of lack of opportunities and con- 

 \ trary to the most approved principles of pedagogy. 



For a time he studied at a "select school " taught by the pastor's 

 son, and at twelve he was sent to the Clinton Grammar School. 

 There he studied for two years, spending his summer vacations 

 in the harvest-field. After another year of study at the academy 

 in Fairfield, his general education was brought to a close, at a 

 point that one might roughly estimate as about half through a 

 good high school of to-day. 



His practical father thought the time had come to turn educa- 

 tion into useful channels, and persuaded him to begin at once the 

 study of medicine. This advice to a partly trained boy of fifteen 

 was a testimony not only to his reputation as a student, but also 

 to the current notion as to the amount of general education neces- 

 sary for a physician. In 1826, therefore, Gray entered the "Medi- 



