166 



ASA GRAY. 



undertaken now by other — though hardly by abler — hands.- His 

 paper on the 4 Relations of the Japanese with the North-American 

 Flora,' was published in 1859, and is styled by Prof. Sargent his 

 " most remarkable contribution to science." His two little books 

 of ' Botany for Young People,' entitled, ' How Plants Grow,' and 

 1 How Plants Behave,' show that Dr. Gray possessed the by no 

 means common gift of presenting scientific truths in simple lan- 

 guage with perfect accuracy. In 1878 he took up his long-inter- 

 rupted work on the Flora of North America, publishing then the 

 Gamopetalm after Compowta, and later (in 1884) a revision, which, 

 of course, was really a new book, of the Composite and few pre- 

 ceding Gamopetalous orders. He had previously elaborated the 

 GavwpetaijB for the handsome volumes of the * Botany of California.' 



His visits to Europe for the purpose of consulting various 

 herbaria were continued as opportunity served, and were always 

 shared by Mr*. Gray. It was during one of them (in 1869) that the 

 Thames boat-race between crews of Oxford and Harvard Universi- 

 ties took place, and Dr. Gray, with his fellow-professor, the poet 

 Longfellow, was among the crowd of sympathising spectators. 

 During his visits to England, he lived at Kew, and was thus 

 enabled to interchange opinions with Mr. Benthani and Sir Joseph 

 Hooker, and to be consulted by them on certain particulars regard- 

 ing the 'Genera Plantarum,' when that great work was in progress, 

 in 1877 he accompanied Sir Joseph on a visit to the Rocky Moun- 

 tain region, the results of which are recorded in a suggestive paper 

 published in the names of both botanists. 



Of the long and intimate connection which existed between 

 Gray and Darwin it is unnecessary to speak ; it is sufficiently 

 manifested in the ■ Life and Letters' of the latter, from which we 

 learn, inter alia, that Darwin was led to take up the subject of 

 climbing plants by reading a paper ( On the Coiling of Tendrils,' 

 published by Gray in 1858. One of the first to welcome the 

 1 Origin of Species,' and throughout a warm supporter of Darwin 

 and his views, Asa Gray was never to be found in the ranks of 

 those who oppose the doctrine of development to the teachings of 

 revealed religion. While admitting, for instance, the influence of 

 " natural selection," he is careful to say — " if this term is to stand 

 for sufficient cause and rational explanation, it must denote 

 or include that inscrutable something which produces, as well as 

 that which results in the survival of, ' the fittest.' " t " Natural 

 law," he says elsewhere, " is the human conception of continued 

 and orderly Divine action ;" and this, says Prof. Dana,§ was "bis 

 firm faith to the end." Gray himself thus summed up his creed: 



* It must always be a matter of regret that Sir Joseph Hooker has never 

 fulfilled the hope he expressed, in the preface to the first edition of the 

 4 Student's Flora,' oi preparing a companion to that work which should 

 contain tk a record of those physiological and morphological observations on 

 British plants which have given so great an impulse and zest to botanical pur- 

 suits/' 



t ■ Panviniana,' p. 3 J. 



; Amer. Journ. Science and Arts, I860, p. 183. § Id., 1888, p. 190. 



