274 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



is occupied with he presents no bare outline, 

 but fills up his picture with a wealth of in- 

 teresting details. And his good-natured fun 

 is continually peeping out from some corner. 

 The first group of letters concern various 

 undertakings between the twenty-first and 

 twenty-eighth years of his life, and are most- 

 ly addressed to his father and mother and to 

 Dr. John Torrey. In them he speaks frankly 

 of his plans and aspirations, saying in one 

 place, " I am determined to persevere for a 

 little while yet before I give up all hopes 

 from science as a pursuit for life." His 

 journeys by stage-coach and steamboat to 

 various places in the State of New York and 

 one to Detroit are graphically described. 

 His account of his first journey in Europe, 

 given in letters home which took the form of 

 a journal, is also very graphic. We find in 

 the early pages of this chapter enthusiastic 

 references to twenty days of study among Sir 

 William Hooker's botanical collections, close- 

 ly followed by a description of Edinburgh 

 and references to lectures by the famous men 

 in its university. Here he does not neg- 

 lect to note that Dr. Hope, who lectured on 

 chemistry, " did not wear his gown or ruffles 

 at the wrist," also that the class in anatomy 

 " behaved shockingly, even for medical stu- 

 dents." In London, through his letters of 

 introduction and the good offices of Hooker 

 and his son "Joe," who were there at the 

 same time, Gray made many pleasant and 

 useful acquaintances. Busy days those 

 spent in the " modern Babylon " must have 

 been, for a bewildering number of persons 

 and places were visited. Proceeding to 

 France, Dr. Gray made the acquaintance of 

 Jussieu, Decaisne, Seringe, Delile, and other 

 botanists. He then crossed Italy and visited 

 parts of Austria, turned back through Switz- 

 erland and Germany, and finally sailed from 

 Hamburg for London. His journal describes 

 his meeting with the celebrated botanists of 

 all the places visited, and contains the travel- 

 er's impressions of the usuai "sights," be- 

 sides notes of miscellaneous incidents of 

 travel. The year in Europe is followed by a 

 decade of work at home, in the early part of 

 which Dr. Gray was appointed to the Fisher 

 professorship in Harvard College, which he 

 retained for the rest of his life. The letters 

 of this period speak of work on Torrey and 

 Gray's Flora of North America, the arrange- 



ments for the new labors at Harvard, and 

 work on various publications. One of his 

 first discoveries in Cambridge was that 

 " there's nothing like Down East for learned 

 women," and he gives instances. A second 

 trip to Europe was made in 1850-'51 ; old 

 friendships were revived and new ones 

 made. One of the new friends was Charles 

 Darwin, and a large part of the letters in the 

 next division of this collection were addressed 

 to him. The letters in the remaining divi- 

 sions tell of new publications and revisions of 

 old ones, the examination of collections and 

 single specimens from all quarters of the 

 globe, further journeys to Europe and else- 

 where, and miscellaneous matters. One of 

 the most valuable features of these two vol- 

 umes are the opinions and bits of informa- 

 tion about prominent botanists that are scat- 

 tered through them. Prof. Gray was not 

 oblivious to affairs of moment outside the 

 field of botany ; thus his letters during the 

 time of the civil war contain many vigorous 

 comments upon passing events, and we are 

 informed in a foot-note that he enlisted and 

 drilled with a company raised for service in 

 Massachusetts. He was then over fifty years 

 of age. The playful turns of thought al- 

 ready referred to are frequent. Now the 

 subject is the German feather-stuffed bed- 

 covering, again it is the simian ancestry im- 

 plied in Darwin's books, but nothing is 

 more delightful than the burlesque botanical 

 description of the piece of wedding cake that 

 he sends to the Torreys. The two volumes 

 contain three portraits of Dr. Gray, a picture 

 of him in his study, and a view of the range 

 of buildings in the Harvard Botanic Gar- 

 den. A brief autobiography prefixed to the 

 first volume gives an account of Gray's an- 

 cestry and his early years. 



A CLASS IN GEOMETRY : LESSONS IN OBSERVA- 

 TION AND EXPERIMENT. By GEORGE ILES. 

 New York and Chicago: E. L. Kellogg 

 & Co. Pp. 46. Illustrated. Price, 25 

 cents. 



" CAN dry bones live ? " is apt to be one's 

 thought in taking up a book on lines, sur- 

 faces, and angles. That the dry bones of 

 geometry can live Mr. lies proved to the 

 readers of The Popular Science Monthly in 

 November, 1890. He then told in part a 

 story which here is told in full. Taking an 



