STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 135 



ASA GRAY. 

 During the past year the death of no one has been more uni- 

 versally regretted than that of Prof. Asa Gray, the renowned bota- 

 nist of Harvard College. Not alone are botanists indebted lo him, 

 but fruit growers and florists will always owe him a debt of gratitude, 

 for the excellent works he has written and the valuable knowledge 

 they contain. The following paragraphs are from The School Worlds 

 and it is a pleasure to publish them as a tribute to his memory. 



Dr. Asa Gra}' was of Scotch-Irish descent. He was born in 

 Paris, Oneida County, N. Y., Nov. 10, 1810. His father was by 

 occupation a tanner, and operated a tannery in this New York town. 

 As a boy, Asa Gray is said to have been bright and liveh^ a great 

 reader, and able to gratify his tastes in that line from the volumes 

 of a circulating librarj', for which he was messenger. He read the 

 Waverly Novels, Byron and Shakespeare, and these had very much 

 to do with the development of the high literary taste shown b}' him 

 later io life. At the age of eleven years, he entered an academe', 

 where he spent several years till he began the study of medicine. 

 When twenty-one years of age, he graduated from the Fairfield 

 Medical College. 



By chance when a bo}', he read an article on botany in an ency- 

 clopedia, and his first ideas of botany seemed to have come from the 

 reading of this. He was for a time under the instruction of Dr. 

 John Torre}', from whom he received most valuable lessons in botanj- 

 as well as an excellent training for all the phases of life. So great 

 was his earl}' love for the stud}^ of botany, that he did not long 

 engage in the practice of medicine. 



Dr. Gra}', who was long associated with Agassiz, became Fisher 

 professor of Natural Histor}' in Harvard in 1842. The science of 

 botany was then ia very much the same condition as Agassiz found 

 that of zoology, though if anj'thing, less was reall}' known of it 

 North America, with its varied climatic conditions, was an excellent 

 field for botanical stud}'. The work had hardly more than begun 

 when Dr. Gray went to Harvard. He was a patient observer, as 

 well as a good systematizer. He was able to interpret plant life and 

 translate it into language comprehensible to the school boy as well 

 as the college professor. The ''Flora of North America" soon grew 

 out of his labors and at once became the standard of all the botanists 

 in this country, as it is to-day. The systematic ^'Herbarium" 



