182 Asa Gray. 



a champion speller in the numerous ' matches ' that enlivened the 

 District school." At the age of eleven, nearly twelve, he was 

 sent to the Grammar school at Clinton, where he remained for 

 two years, and the following year, to the Fairfield Academy, 

 both of the schools places where all the classics and mathemat- 

 ics were taught that were required for entering the colleges of 

 the land. But his instruction was cut short by his father's 

 desire that he should enter the Fairfield Medical School. This 

 school, of high repute, was established at that place in 1812, 

 as the College of Physicians and Surgeons of .the Western 

 District of Kew York. Dr. James Hadley was the Profes- 

 sor of Chemistry and Materia Medica, and his lectures of 

 1825-6, while Gray was in the Academy, and 1826-7, after he 

 had taken up medicine, gave the young student his first in- 

 struction in science. During the following winter at Fair- 

 field, that of 1827-8, the article on Botany in the Edinburgh 

 Encyclopaedia attracted young Gray's attention, and excited 

 his interest so deeply that he at once bought a copy of " Eaton's 

 Botany " and longed for spring. As spring opened, " he sal- 

 lied forth early, discovered a plant in bloom, brought it home 

 and found its name in the Manual to be Claytonia Virginioa, 

 the species C. Caroliniana, to which the plant really belonged 

 not being distinguished then." From this time, collecting plants 

 became his chief pleasure. He finished his medical course, 

 and, in the spring of 1831, took his degree of Doctor of Med- 

 icine — to him the basis for a title, but not for future work. 



This ended his school and college days. As Gray's scien- 

 tific education was carried forward without the aid of a formal 

 scientific school, so it was with his literary studies. He had 

 not the benefit of university training, and yet became eminent 

 for his graceful and vigorous English, the breadth of his 

 knowledge, his classical taste, and the acuteness of his logical 

 perceptions. 



Before the close of the medical course, he had opened corres- 

 pondence about his plants with Dr. Lewis C. Beck, a promi- 

 nent botanist of Albany, and had had a collection named 

 for him by Dr. John Torrey of New York. Moreover, about 

 this time, he delivered his first course of lectures on Botany, 

 as substitute for Dr. Beck, and made use of the fees that he 



