710 
It is also Farlow who is my authority for 
the statement ‘that his passion for plants 
was aroused by reading the article on 
Botany in the Edinburgh Cyclopedia,’* 
and with a fondness for collecting, we 
learn that even before graduating ‘he 
had brought together a considerable her- 
barium.’+ 
It does not appear that he ever practiced 
medicine, for during the same year that he 
graduated he became instructor in chem- 
istry, mineralogy, and botany, in the high 
school in Utica, and he also lectured on 
these subjects at the medical school. 
In 1833 he went to New York, where he 
joined Torrey, whose assistant he became, 
and two years later, through Torrey’s in- 
fluence, he.was appointed curator and libra- 
rian of the Lyceum of Natural History, now 
the New York Academy of Sciences. About 
that time the preliminary arrangements for 
the Wilkes Exploring Expedition were be- 
ing made, and the place of botanist was ac- 
cepted by Gray. It was the fact that his 
friend Gray had accepted an appointment 
on the expedition that led Dana to consider 
favorably an invitation to serve as its min- 
eralogist. However, the departure of the 
expedition was delayed for some time, and 
in the meanwhile Gray resigned to accept a ~ 
closer relationship with Torrey, who sought 
his association in the preparation of his 
Flora of North America. 
The organization of a great university is 
in many ways a formidable undertaking, 
and the selection of its faculty is, perhaps, 
the most difficult of all the problems that 
come ‘up for consideration. Some sixty 
years ago the University of Michigan elected 
Asa Gray as its first professor of botany. 
He accepted the honor, but asked that he 
be permitted first to spend a year abroad in 
study. The splendid opportunities for set- 
tling disputed points in American botany, 
* Memorial of Asa Gray, p. 20. 
fidem, p. 20. 
SCIENCE. 
[N. 8. Von. X. No. 255. 
as well as the association with many stu 
dents of science who have since become 
eminent, was fruitful of rich results, and so 
it was that on his return the continuation 
of the Flora demanded his first attention. 
The young university in the west lost his 
services, but botany as a science, was the 
gainer. Later, perhaps, he might have set- 
tled in Ann Arbor, but in 1842 an oppor- 
tunity, such as comes to but few men, came 
to him when he was invited to accept the 
Fisher professorship of Natural History in 
Harvard. At that time ‘there was no 
herbarium, no library, only one insignifi- 
cant greenhouse, and garden, all in confu- 
sion with few plants of value.’* To de- 
scribe the development of the botanical de- 
partment of Harvard, as guided by him, 
would take more space than I can rightly 
give, and in this case it is not necessary to 
attempt it, for in the Memorial of Asa Gray, 
from which much has already been taken, 
the story is told by his three friends and as- 
sociates, Goodale, Watson and Farlow, each 
of whom succeeded to a share of his work. 
I may, however, say that at the time of his 
death, in 1888, the herbarium, the largest 
and most valuable in America, contained 
over 400,000 specimens, the library had 
more than 8,000 titles, the ‘insignificant 
greenhouse’ had been increased many fold, 
and the garden had become the most im- 
portant of its kind in this country. 
Like Louis Agassiz, Wolcott Gibbs, Jef- 
fries Wyman, and other of his great con- 
temporaries at Harvard, his influence as a 
teacher was remarkable, and it was well 
said of him that ‘he trained up a whole race 
of botanists, now scattered through all parts 
of the United States.’ Like Dana, his 
influence was extended by his text-books 
throughout the English-speaking world. His 
Elements of Botany, first published in 1836, 
became later the Structural and Systematic 
* Memorial of Asa Gray, p. 26. 
t Idem, p. 28. 
