ASA GRAY 219 



rapidly after Gray's first return from Europe; but at this time 

 there began the memorable series of great transcontinental surveys, 

 each returning with notable collections of the plants of the regions 

 traversed. Naturally most of this material came to Torrey and 

 Gray for determination, and these botanists began to get some 

 glimpses of the riches of the American flora. Report after report 

 was published, and they are now well-known classics in American 

 systematic botany. So rapidly did the new material appear and 

 so endless did it seem that the Flora of North America was hope- 

 lessly out-of-date before half of it had appeared. Any attempt to 

 include the whole flora of North America in a single publication 

 was clearly out of the question at that time, and so its completion 

 was postponed indefinitely. Many years later, after the successive 

 waves of new material had subsided a little, Dr. Gray renewed the 

 attempt in what he called the Synoptical Flora of North America. 

 It began where the old Flora of Torrey and Gray stopped; then 

 it began to traverse again the ground of the older publication ; and 

 it is still in process of publication. It was hoped that it could be 

 completed by Dr. Gray; for although he could delegate his work, 

 he could not delegate his great grasp and vast experience. But 

 he did leave a reorganized science, and a better conception of what 

 such work demands in the way of research and equipment. 



No one was more competent to estimate Gray's place in syste- 

 matic botany than his life-long friend Sir Joseph Hooker, the great 

 English botanist, who wrote in Nature, upon the occasion of 

 Gray's death: 



"When the history of the progress of botany during the nine- 

 teenth century shall be written, two names will hold high posi- 

 tions; those of Professor Augustin Pyrame DeCandolle (Geneva) 

 and Professor Asa Gray. One sank to his rest in the Old World 

 as the other rose to eminence in the New. Both were great 

 teachers, prolific writers, and authors of the best elementary works 

 on botany of their day." 



The preparation of the large Floras referred to was but the 

 bringing together in organized form of the great mass of mono- 

 graphs and "contributions" of new species that was constantly is- 



