8 BOTANICAL GAZETTE. | Jan. 
to destroy religion. But for all that you have done we do not 
release you from service. We expect you to serve yet many 
years the cause of education and sacred truth ; and we expect to 
concede you the highest honors of all for the labors which, we 
trust, are to adorn the last quarter of your century. 
With us the pleasure of these congratulations is quite pecu- 
liar, since we can hail you as an ex-professor in our University. 
Your memory readily reverts to the crude infancy of this insti- 
tution, when your name was chosen to stand first in its list of 
professors. You recall your actual participation in the labors of 
our early organizers; and we trust that while your recognized 
gifts of mind and heart found early employment in a broader 
field than was offered in Michigan, you have never ceased to en- 
tertain an interest in the University which you aided to inaugu- 
rate, and have some personal satisfaction in seeing the slender 
shoot of 1838 grown to the dimensions of the sturdy oak of 1885. 
Accept, Respected Sir, 
Our Kind Remembrance 
And Our Cordial Greeting. 
DR. GRAY’S REPLY. 
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., November 20, 1885. 
Prof. W. H. Petiee, Secretary of the Senate of the University of Michigan: 
DEAR Sir: 
I can not well say how deeply I was touched and gratified by 
the Congratulatory Address from the Senate of your University, 
which I found on my table on the morning of my seventy-fifth 
birthday, accompanied by your official and friendly note. I was 
particularly impressed with the breadth of its survey of the la- 
bors of my life, and with the discriminating reference to some of 
them which would escape ordinary notice. I beg you to convey 
to the Senate my grateful acknowledgement of the very kind 
notice thus taken of my endeavors. recognize, moreover, the 
fitness of its intimation that I should make the most of the few 
years that may perhaps remain. I am happy to be able to de- 
clare that my appetite for work is as yet unabated; also that 
labor is still attended with joy rather than with the sorrow which 
the Psalmist contemplates. 
I am much pieased that, although a deserter from the ranks 
before the war began, I am generously recognized as an ex-pro- 
fessor of the University of Michigan. I suppose that the only 
direct service I ever rendered it was that of getting together, 
when in Europe in 1838-9, the books which were the small 
