Asa Gray: His Life and Work. 355 



"by the contradiction between tlie dogma of tlie fixity of species 

 and the aspects presented by the discovered facts of the vegetal 

 world. Such natural groups of plants as mosses, ferns, Coniferai, 

 Umbiliferge, Compositae, Labiataj, Papilionaceaj, were recognized. 

 These groups were seen and felt, as we see and feel the groups 

 of birds, reptiles, etc., in the animal world. Even Linnteus 

 believed in a natural system of classification founded on con- 

 stitutional resemblances. Here and there, while artificial classifi- 

 cation held the field, a few European botanists of deeper insiglit 

 pondered over the natural relationships of plants, and by the 

 comparative study of mature forms arrived at the science of 

 morphology, which was soon greatly advanced by the microscope ; 

 and the anatomy and physiology of plants were also studied with 

 eit'ect. A long series of relationships among plants was woiked 

 out with great clearness, but they were all characterized by that 

 mysterious word " affinity," and here thought mostly ended. The 

 idea of the symmetry of plants was reached by these deeper 

 students; and mingling metaphysics with objective studies, the 

 notion of types in the vegetal world was conceived. By the help 

 of theological conceptions, the plan of creation, it was thought, 

 had been discovered by Naturalists, who readily took the next 

 step of regarding tlie objects of Nature as the thoughts of the 

 Creator a view made familiar to us thirty or forty years ago by 

 Prof. Agassi z. 



Owing to this state of things philosophical botany made slow 

 progress, and only the most gifted minds could evolve correct 

 principles available in classification. Prof. Torrey was a man of 

 the required stamp, but he came a little too soon. Prof. Gray's 

 study of Japanese vegetation brought him to conclusions concern- 

 ing the fixity of species that made him one of Darwin's most able 

 advisers in the years preceding the issue of the "Origin of Species." 

 "With the Elora of a continent to be studied in the light of recent 

 discovery it seems doubly deplorable that the thirty-five most 

 productive years of Prof. Gray's life should not have been spent 

 in original research under the most favorable conditions. 



Prof. Gray's case is only one of many in which men of great 

 powers, anxiously seeking to use them to the world's advantage, 

 have been compelled to spend their lives in drudgery, and to die 

 with their great work unaccomplished. The world must continue 

 to suffer the loss of such knowledge as Asa Gray might have 

 added to its stock. And the need of some method of discovering 

 master-minds, and presenting them as candidates for support to 

 those who are anxious to contribute to the advance of knowledge, 

 is forcibly suggested by this history. 



Dn. Leavis G. Jaxes : 



The nature of Dr. Gray's contribution to the doctrine of Evolu- 

 tion may perhaps be best understood by taking a single example, 

 explanatory of his theory of the geographical distribution of plants. 

 It is found that the nearest extant relations of the great secjuoias, 

 or red-wood trees, two varieties of which are now found in 

 California, and nowhere else in the world, are the southern 

 cypress, found in the swanijis and everglades of our Southern 

 Atlantic States, and a similar tree of the cypress family, now 



