Asa Gray: His Life and Work. 359 



notwithstandinj]^ the reiterated declarations of the Professors and 

 of the text-books, my own mind would not accept the doctrine of 

 the fixity of species. For, my experience was that in attempting 

 to find the genus and the species of the plant in hand, the case 

 was a rare and exceptional one where the entire description of any 

 species would everywhere fit any specimen ; and I well remember 

 that when compelled to resort to the Professor for that reason, 

 and because I attempted to adhere to the principle of the fixity of 

 species something like heat, if not indignation, would flash 

 through me when the Professor gave me a si^ecific name over 

 which I had long puzzled in vain and which I had perhaps I'ejected 

 because of the defective description. From that time, the Summer 

 of 1845, till the publication of the "Origin of Species," I carried 

 a skeptical mind on the subject, and when that book was published, 

 although I could only get access, in the South, through bi'ief 

 reviews, through the information contained in newspaper scraps, 

 and I may say through orthodox sermons and their struggles 

 with the "monkey problem," to what it contained, I pi'omptly 

 accepted the principle taught by Darwin in that book, basing 

 that acceptance largely upon the facts of my long past experience, 

 and upon the satisfactory explanation offered by him of my early 

 difficulties in the study of botany. It is to be remembered, we 

 had Lamarck, and the "Vestiges of Creation," and that discussion 

 was active and had already undermined many old theories. 



Further, in the home into which I was born, geological and 

 palajontological specimens were everywhere and to a large extent 

 the playthings of my childhood. The more recent tracing of the 

 history of plant-life from fossil forms down to living forms by 

 Professor Gray lias been mentioned in the essay of the evening. 

 Botany as well as geology and palaeontology were constant topics 

 in that household as far back as I can remember; and as early as 

 1845 certainly, probably before, I distinctly remember tracing the 

 genus Equisetum back as far as its gigantic fossiliferous forms 

 found in the Coal Measures. Perhaps I may be permitted to go a 

 step further. By this time of day I suppose I am recognized in 

 this Association as a thorough believer in Evolution as taught by 

 both Darwin and Spencer. I first learned of Spencer by taking 

 up one of his books of essays in a bookstore in Albany in the 

 Winter of 1862-68, not long after Professor Youmans hadbrought 

 about his introduction to America. Before the first page was 

 finished my mind was caught. As I read on still standing I 

 soon began to hear my mind saying: Here he is at last the 

 thinker, philosopher and leader for ichom I have looked so long in 

 rain ! Seeing other books bearing his name on the same table, I 

 rapidly glanced through them, and soon found the programme of 

 the system of Philosophy he was to write and the list of what he 

 had already written. Among these was the title of his essay on 

 Population, printed in a Westminster Beview of 18.52. Being 

 myself already an anti-Malthusian, I immediately concluded that 

 an examination of that essay would establish his position as a 

 thinker, for me. It was not yet an hour since I had picked up the 

 essays. Proceeding directly to the State Library I obtained the 

 copy of tlie Beview, and found my hopes and expectations con- 

 firmed in the first sentence. From that day I have been an earnest 

 Spencerian. And that I have been so, I believe is due primarily to 

 Professor Eaton, to the Kensselaer Institute established by him, 



