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ASA GRAY'S LAST WORDS ON NOMENCLATURE. 



[In this Journal for 1892, pp. 254, 818, reference was made to 

 a letter, — the last written by Asa Gray, — which, owing to circum- 

 stances not very clearly related, had never been published. The 

 volume of the Letters of Asa Gray, just issued by Messrs. Macmillan, 

 contains the document in full, and we here reproduce it. 



The circumstances connected with its writing and subsequent 

 non-publication require to be stated. That Asa Gray was willing 

 it should be published, the letter itself makes clear ; that he con- 

 sidered it important is plain from the passage in the Letters which 

 introduces it: — "On Sunday [Nov. 27] his pulse and temperature 

 had improved so much that he was allowed to get up and go down- 

 stairs at noon, the doctor congratulating him on the success of the 

 treatment. There seemed a weakness of the right hand, which, 

 however, passed away, and he wrote that evening the letter to Dr. 

 Britton, which follows, and when remonstrated with for making the 

 exertion, said, 'it was important, and must be written.' " He died 

 on the 2nd of the following February. 



Mankind has always attached a special interest to the last 

 utterances of great men, and it might have been supposed that Dr. 

 Britton would have hastened to avail himself of the permission, 

 expressly given by the writer to publish, in his Bulletin, the last 

 contribution ever made by Asa Gray to the literature which he had 

 enriched for so many years. So far, however, was this from being 

 the case, that it was not until Gray's fellow-worker himself lay on 

 his death-bed that any knowledge of its existence was made public. 

 Sereno Watson, in his last illness, dictated for the Botanical Gazette 

 some remarks "On Nomenclature," which appeared in that journal 

 for June, 1892, and which contain the following passage:— 



his duty to publish the last written words of Dr. Gray which were 

 addressed to him upon this subject, and which expressed his 

 positive opinions upon this point." We called attention to this 

 in our Journal (1892, 254) in these words :—" When, in the 

 exercise of our editorial discretion, we withheld from publication a 

 subsequently printed note by Dr. Britton on this subject, he did not 

 scruple to say [and to publish] that this was because we were 

 'apparently afraid of the argument therein contained.' We shall 

 await with interest Dr. Britton's statemant of the reasons which 

 have induced him to suppress the last utterances of America's 

 greatest systematist." 



Dr. Britton's explanation appears in the Botanical ( 

 August, 1892, p. 254. He speaks of the letter as "personal," and, 

 having admitted the accuracy of Dr. Gray's correction as to nomen- 

 clature, proceeds : — "The letter did not come to me as editor of the 

 Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, for I was not then editing 

 that journal. I did not realize that it was intended for publication, 

 and do not think that it was." Moreover, having sent the letter to 

 Cambridge, in accordance with a request, and having accepted a 



