pursuits ; the first overt indication of this was a book pub- 

 lished in the father's name, but of which the substance was 

 furnished by the son. This book was worthy of a better fate. 

 It met with a most unworthy reception at the hands of some 

 of the leading botanists of the day, and their opposition was 

 strong enough to mar the success of a book which, had it had 

 fair play, would have constituted really an epoch in the history 

 of botany in this country. As it was, its merits were recog- 

 nised only after the lapse of time, when much that it contained 

 had been published elsewhere, and when many of the crudities 

 of a young and inexperienced author had necessarily become 

 more apparent by the progress of science in the interval. 



At that time (in 1821) the influence of Linnaeus w T as para- 

 mount. Sir James Smith, the then leader in the botanical 

 world, was an ardent Linnean, the founder of the L-innean 

 Society, the purchaser of the Linnean library and the Linnean 

 collections, and the compiler of a standard work on British 

 botany arranged according to Linnean principles. When, 

 therefore, a young, and till, then unheard-of, naturalist actually 

 dared to bring out a systematic work on English botany, 

 arranged according to the Juissieuan or so-called natural sys- 

 tem — a French system, too — we can imagine that the Volscians 

 were fluttered. Had this been the only result, no great harm 

 would have been done ; but unluckily, whether their self-love 

 was wounded, or whatever the cause, the botanists of the day 

 subjected Gray to something very like persecution. The facts 

 have never been denied, and so we presume they are substan- 

 tially true. One result of this persecution was, that when 

 Gray was proposed in 1822 as a Fellow of the Linnean Society, 

 by a number of Fellows, including Haworth and Salisbury, he 

 was unceremoniously rejected. 



"If," says Dr. Gray, "the slightest hint had been given to any of my 

 proposers I should have immediately withdrawn, as I could ill afford the 

 subscription. Only a few of the proposers were present, they made so 

 sure of my election, the rejection of a candidate being a very rare event. 

 I only recollect one besides myself. The list of proposers — all persons 



