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EDWARD GRAY, F.R.S. 



From the " Athenaeum." 



After more than fifty years of unremitting labour in the field 

 of natural history, Dr. John Edward Gray died on Sunday 

 last, the 7th inst., at his residence in the British Museum, aged 

 seventy-five. Dr. Gray was one of a family of naturalists. 

 His father, Samuel Frederick Gray, by the publication of " The 

 Natural Arrangement of British Plants," was the first to in- 

 troduce into this country Jussieu's method of classification as 

 distinguished from that proposed by Linnaeus ; and his great 

 uncle, Dr. Edward Whittaker Gray, was also a botanist of 

 eminence, and had the sole charge of the collection of Natural 

 History and Antiquities, which formed the nucleus of the 

 present British Museum. His brother, the late George Robert 

 Gray, was the author of many valuable publications on en- 

 tomology and ornithology. 



Dr. Gray, from his earliest youth, was endowed with a per- 

 severance and energy of character that enabled him to master 

 with facility every subject to which he directed his attention ; 

 and his faculty of classification, combined with great power of 

 memory and quick insight into specific differences, gave him 

 very early a high position among the naturalists of Europe. 

 Intended originally for the medical profession, his innate tastes 

 soon led him to adopt the career in which he became so dis- 

 tinguished, even if an extraordinary repugnance to scenes of 

 pain, which, his sympathizing nature could never overcome, 



