756 FINAL JOURNEYS AND WORK. [1884, 



Darwin died, and she, on the part of the family, an- 

 nounced it to me. I am glad to know that she wrote 

 the sketch of Maurice in the " British Quarterly." 



And now about ourselves. I got the Composite 

 off my mind late in the spring, but not off my hands 

 until sometime in August. At the end of August and 

 of the pleasant part of the summer here (for it was 

 delightful in Cambridge, so cool and quiet, and Mrs. 

 Gray away only for three weeks with her friends on 

 the coast) I went to the meeting of the British Asso- 

 ciation at Montreal ; enjoyed it much ; read a paper, 1 a 

 sort of address, to the botanists coming over to North 

 America, which the Section seemed to like and voted 

 to print in extenso. (I will first print it here, and 

 send you a copy. Not that there is much novelty in 

 it, but it may be readable.) I had to leave the meet- 

 ing after three or four days, and return here ; sorry to 

 leave our friend Mr. Walter Browne ill at the hospi- 

 tal with typhoid fever. He and his poor wife received 

 every kind attention, but he died in a few days. 



It is agreed that the British meeting was a dis- 

 tinguished success. It brought over a throng of 

 English people, and the American savants (I cannot 

 abide the word " scientists ") were in good force. We 

 were repaid by the large attendance of British Associ- 

 ation members at Philadelphia, where they contrib- 

 uted to make our meeting large and notable. 



Up to this time the weather was all that could be 

 wished, cooler, I suppose, than in England at the time. 

 But that week at Philadelphia was raging. Mrs. 

 Gray and I were there for the whole week, domiciled 



1 " Characteristics of the North American Flora," American Journal 

 of Science, ser. 3, vol. xxviii. p. 323 ; also in Scientific Papers of 

 A. Gray, selected by C. S. Sargent. 



