44 BOTANY. 
parage him in the estimation of his friends,”—all this certainly conveyed to 
my mind the conviction that some serious delinquency had been charged. 4 
It is with satisfaction, therefore, that I have read your letter now before 
me, obligingly written ‘‘ to put [me] in possession of the whole subject.” i 
I learn from it that the reasons for Dr. Parry’s sammary and ignominious 
dismissal relate to some details of a. in the mode of conducting offi- 
cial botanical correspondence, — to a momentary loss of temper in the 
presence of one of your subordinates fid by the mọde in which 2 
he destroyed a letter of his which had been returned to him to be can- — 
celled), and for which he duly apologized,—to the subscribing of a let- 3 
ter addressed familiarly “My Dear Doctor” [evidently some botanical 
correspondent] by the phrase “ yours officially,”—that in some letters you — 
found “ his mode of expression wanting in perspicuity ”(a fault into which : 
more practised writers may sometimes fall),—and finally, that you did i 
not discover in Dr. Parry the kind or degree of botanical qualifications 
for the post which you were entitled to expect, and deemed the sorriomi 
of “an herbarium botanist” practically unimportant. 7 
As your letter has relieved my own mind from a painful anxiety upon 
this subject, it may have the same effect upon others, upon whose minds 
also your action had left the alternative of supposing, either bad conduct — 
Ase 
on the part of one hitherto highly esteemed, or of very hard usage "T ; 
wards him (it was thought through some AREARE of himon = 
Some misapprehension of yours). I think it proper and just, the refor e ; 
m 
making public, in scientific circles, first, the correspondence bet 
Dr. Parry and yourself, and second, that between ourselves. 
m, very respectfully yours, 
Asa GRAY- 
EXTRACTS FROM REPORTS OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE AG 
CULTURAL COLLEGE of Pennsylvania, made by the Hon. FREDERICK Me 
1865, 1868 : — examples of “ perspicuity,” ete. 
“If science and learning be useful at all, where can it tell with so 
potent an influence, as where it deals with the operations of a et va 
embrace a great number of mechanical and chemical forces, and aie 
the necessity for searching after philosophical truth?” i 
“The individual members of the Board of Trustees, have labored 
“Our experience ieee us, that a farmer’s son, graduated in wt 
institution, finds no place, ever after, in the domestic circle of his amily 
