1895.] ESSAYS. 77 



the fact that the ancestors of Asa Gray, the most distinguished 

 American botanist, were among the early settlers of Worcester. In 

 his autobiography he says: "My great-great-grandfather, John 

 Gray, with his family, among which was Robert Gray, supposed to be 

 one of his sons, emigrated from Londonderry, Ireland, to Worcester, 

 Mass., being a part of a Scotch-Irish colony. The farm they took up 

 was on the north side of what is now Lincoln Street." This was in 

 the year 1718, four years before the iucorporatiou of the settlement 

 as a town. Moses Wiley Gray, one of the grandsons of John Gray, 

 married in Worcester and afterwards moved to Terapleton, and later 

 to Oneida County, New York, where Asa Gray, one of the grandsons, 

 was born in 1810. In the early records of Worcester the name Gray 

 is of frequent occurrence. 



The great order, Ericaceffi, or Heath family, to which the huckle- 

 berries already referred to belong, is well represented in our local 

 flora. Of the twenty-six genera described in the INIanual, which in- 

 cludes the district east of the Mississippi and north of North Caro- 

 lina and Tennessee, all but nine are represented in our flora; and of 

 the sixty-nine species, thirty-five are also found here. On some ac- 

 counts this is one of the most important families represented in our 

 flora. 



It contains the two genera, Gaylussacia and Vaccinium, which yield 

 plentiful supplies of huckleberries, blueberries and cranberries, and 

 such genera as Kalraia and Rhododendron, which furnish some of our 

 handsomest shrubs. 



One of the most interesting native plants of this order to me per- 

 sonally Is the Labrador Tea. I had known of it long before seeing 

 it. In Emerson's "Trees and Shrubs," I had seen his reference to 

 Hubbardston as one of its localities. One of my friends who had 

 landed on the coast of Greenland, where flowers of great delicacy 

 bloom at the foot of glaciers, had shown me sprays of it in leaf, but 

 without blossoms ; and at last another friend brings me some which 

 he had found growing naturally within three miles of this hall. It 

 must have been much more abundant formerly. Soon after the pas- 

 sage by Parliament of the famous act imposing a duty upon tea and 

 some other articles imported into the American colonies, a meeting 

 was held in Boston to take action concerning the use of such taxed 

 articles, and a resolution was passed to refrain from using them. The 

 execution of the resolution against tea required the aid of the female 

 part of the household. A female convention accordingly assembled 

 in Boston and agreed to discontinue the use of the taxed tea and to 



