6 



doing their uttermost to improve zoology and botany — may have fright- 

 ened the regular ' Linneans,' of whom Dr. Shaw may be considered the 

 type, and who proposed putting his heel on all shells not in the twelfth 

 edition of the 'Systema Naturae.' 'Things not in Linnaeus ought not to 

 exist.' It was, however, too bad to inflict their wrath on the grandson 

 of the Mr. Gray who translated the ' Philosophia Botanica ' of Linnaeus 

 for his friend Mr. Lee (of Hammersmith), whose book first introduced 

 the Swedish botanist's scientific writings to English readers. Mr. 

 Haworth, who was present, was so displeased at what he called an unjust 

 and underhand combination to crush a young naturalist, that he made a 

 codicil to his will desiring that his collection of British Lepidoptera Bri- 

 tannica, which he had previously left to the Society, should be sold with 

 his other collections. It stirred up my spirit of resistance, and I deter- 

 mined to leave the medical profession, and devote myself to the study of 

 natural science, and I have no cause to regret the determination or its 

 cause. The cause assigned was that in the ' Natural Arrangement of the 

 British Plants,' published under the name of my father (as I was very 

 young, and only occupied on the synoptic part of it), we had quoted the 

 well-known work to which Dr., afterwards Sir J. E. Smith, contributed 

 the text, as Sowerby's English Botany, and in so doing had insulted the 

 President, which, I may declare, was perfectly unconscious and uninten- 

 tional on my part. The text of the earlier numbers of the English Botany 

 was furnished gratuitously by my predecessor — Dr. George Shaw. As 

 Mr. Sowerby foresaw that the work was likely to be successful, he arranged 

 with Dr. Smith to give him a guinea for the description of each plate. 

 Dr. Smith made a condition that he was to receive the money with the 

 proofs of the descriptions. At the same time Dr. Smith published the 

 botanical articles to Bees' Encyclopaedia, a kind of Species Plantarum, 

 written according to the name of the genus as it occurred in the alphabet . 

 I suppose, considering the price that was paid for the articles in Rees' 

 Encyclopaedia, and that paid for the text of the English Botany, they 

 must be considered as the best paid botanical writings known. Indeed, 

 what with the money Dr. Smith got for these works, the ' English Flora ' 

 and other scientific works, and the eventual purchase of the Linnean 

 collection by the Linnean Society at his death, the acquiring of that col- 

 lection must have been an excellent investment. Dr. Smith seems never 

 to have forgiven me, for when engaged on the ' Monograph of the Cyprae- 

 adae ' I wrote to him asking if I might be allowed to see two or three 

 specimens of the Linnean collection. He did not reply to me, but on 

 asking Mr. Sowerby to make the same request for me, he replied that the 

 Linnean shells were not arranged, but any of Mr. Sowerby's Mends 

 might see them except Mr. Gray." 



These details we quote from an article of Dr. Gray's in the 

 Journal of Botany, written many years after the event to 



