1886. ] BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 7 
which I have the honor, as Secretary of the University Senate, 
herewith to transmit to you a copy. 
At the same time, allow me to recall the privilege I had, more 
than a quarter of a century ago, of sitting under your instruction, 
and personally to extend to you my most cordial greetings and 
congratulations, Very respectfully yours, 
W. H. Perrer. 
[Congratulatory Address, adopted by the Senate of the University of Michi- 
gan, November 9, 1885.] - 
To Professor Asa Gray, M. D., LL. D.: 
The Senate of the University of Michigan, mindful of the 
approach of the seventy-fifth anniversary of your birth, take 
great pleasure in sending you their greetings on the occasion. 
We congratulate you that life and health and usefulness have been 
prolonged till three-quarters of a century have passed over your 
head Ye entertain the hope that many years of activity yet 
remain. 
With our congratulations we beg to give expression to a lively 
sentiment of gratitude for services rendered to your chosen science 
during a long and devoted life. You found the science of botany 
barred by a hedge of technicalities against the approach of the 
common student. You have made it the delight and inspiration 
of the youth of the land. You have subjected the science of 
botany in its higher departments to lucid and masterly exposition. 
Many of the comprehensive and critical reviews of the Ameri- 
can flora have proceeded from your pen. The botanical pages 
of the American Journal of Science reveal labors sufficient in vol- 
ume and value to fill and honor a lifetime. And those labors 
are yours. We hail you as the Nestor of American botany. 
Few of us there are who do not feel gratefully proud to testify 
our personal obligations to you for aid and inspiration in our 
earlier studies ; and none of us fail to appreciate the services and 
onor which you have rendered to education and cultivated 
scholarship. We recall the catholic spirit and breadth of view 
with which you have treated questions of the interpretation and 
philosophy of science. We thank you for your acute but just 
and conservative criticisms and estimates of the doctrine of evo- 
lution through natural selection, at a time when the doctrine was 
new and rising into overshadowing importance which filled many 
honest minds with apprehension. We thank you again for stepping 
to the defense of fundamental religious truth through the power 
of the very philosophy which so many thought sent into the world 
