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ality. He seems, however, to have been jealous of his own pre- 

 eminence, and to have discouraged successfully every possible 

 rival in his chosen field. Fev^^ indeed, during a period of many 

 years, were the Americans who ventured to differ with him upon 

 any botanical matter on which he had expressed an opinion. His 

 assistant at Harvard in his later years, and his successor, was Dr. 

 Sereno Watson, a man of similarly scholarly attainments. 



In one line, however. Gray had a worthy rival. Alphonso 

 Wood possessed neither the talents nor the advantages of Asa 

 Gray, but his class-book of botany always disputed with Gray's 

 manual the right to popular approval as a working reference 

 book upon the flora of the northeastern United States. Nor was 

 Wood's work patterned after that of Gray ; its first edition 

 appeared several months earlier, and its later editions covered a 

 considerably larger field, while the author always persisted in 

 giving clear expression to his own views. Dr. Alvan W. Chap- 

 man, on the other hand, who wrote the well-known flora of the 

 southern United States, was an author in little more than name, 

 the absolute authority of Dr. Gray being recognized throughout 

 the work. 



During the years when Dr. Gray monopolized nearly all of the 

 work on the taxonomy of flowering plants in this country, there 

 arose a number of specialists in plant-groups in which he took 

 little interest — for he realized that it was impossible for one man 

 to cover all the ground — who, as a rule, cooperated with him 

 in their work. Among the specialists in groups of flowering 

 plants were M. S. Bebb, who did notable work with the willows, 

 having at his home in Illinois a remarkable salicetum where he 

 was able to compare the various species in a living state ; George 

 Thurber, best known to botanists as a grass student, although 

 most of his time was devoted to editorial work in agriculture ; 

 and George Vasey, also a specialist in the taxonomy of grasses, 

 and for years the botanist of the United States Department of 

 Agriculture. 



In ferns, the one prominent name was that of Daniel C. Eaton, 

 for thirty years professor of botany at Yale ; he was a grandson 

 of Amos Eaton, whose wonderful influence upon American botany 



