lf)l 



which remain include letters from Dr. Gray (rcfcrrcH to by 

 Greene as his "earliest happy correspondence with this most 

 eminent of American botanists"), together with a list of the 

 plants collected during the first season in Colorado, as determined 

 by Gray and annotated, after the lapse of twenty-five years, by 

 Greene himself. One of the letters is too interesting to omit. 

 Greene writes: "The next letter came toward the close of my 

 first season's work upon the botany of Colorado, and, as will be 

 seen, relates mainly to the method of laying before him the re- 

 sults of the summer's collecting." 



"Botanic Garden, Cambridge, Mass. 

 "Aug. 6, 1870. 

 "Dear Mr. Greene: — 



Yours of July 27 is just in. Well, I think you would do well 

 to send me, at the end of the season, a full set of all the plants 

 which you do not know as in my Manual. Number the speci 

 mens, and I will return names, in as far as I can name them off 

 hand, without special looking up — which may have to be post- 

 poned — and also any that strike me as of special interest. Such, 

 of course, I shall be temipted to examine at once. 



"If you send nice, or even fair specimens — as I hope — some 

 will go into my herbarium at once, and all the rest will, if I do 

 not care to keep them, go to some foreign correspondent whom 

 I need to oblige, and who will be glad to have them. 



"I hope you may find some new things; but you will be sharp 

 if you do. 



"Excuse haste, and believe me to be 



"Very truly yours, 



"Asa Gr,\y." 



In a general review of the development of Rocky Mountain 

 botany which he wrote only a few years ago, Greene alluded to 

 this letter of Gray's as indicating a curiously inadequate idea of 

 the richness of the western flora. " In this year 1870," he wrote, 

 "it was the opinion of the highest authority that b\' the copious 

 gatherings of Parry, Hall and Harbour, the botanical field of the 

 Rocky Mountains had been well nigh exhausted." How far 

 from the truth this idea was, the later work of Greene himself 



