1889.] Recent Literature. 1003 
The Scientific Papers of Asa Gray.'— It was fitting that his 
colleague should edit the scattered papers of the master whose depar- 
ture the world has not yet ceased to mourn. That the selection of an 
editor was a wise one is proved by the volumes before us. The mass 
of material was, as the editor says in the preface, "overwhelming," 
and the task of selection must have been a most difficult and embar- 
rassing one. When we are told that "more than eleven hundred 
bibliographical notices and longer reviews were published by Professor 
Gray in different periodicals," we may realize how hard a task was 
given the editor in the selection of those to be republished and those 
to be left. Still more difficult was the task of making the selection 
present as far as possible "a history of the growth of botanical science " 
during the past fifty years. The success of the editor in spite of these 
difficulties is most gratifying. 
The reviews begin with " Lindley's Natural System of Botany," 
published in 1836. It gives one an idea of how the world of science 
has moved when we read arguments for the natural system. Some of 
the reviewer's reflections upon a class of botanists still by no means 
extinct will bear repetition: "A somewhat larger number may per- 
haps be found in this country who admit the importance and utility ot 
the natural arrangement in the abstract, but decline to avail them- 
selves of the advantages it affords in the study of plants, because, for- 
sooth, it is too much trouble to acquire the enlarged views of vegetable 
structure which are necessary for the application of its principles." 
Verily, the indolent conservatism of half a century ago was not differ- 
ent from that of to-day ! 
In the notice of Endlicher's "Genera Plantarum," we have the fol- 
lowing paragraph: "It commences, like the ' Genera Plantarum ' of 
Jussieu, with the plants of the simplest or lowest organization (Thal- 
lophyta, Endl.) ; a plan which is now the most common, and perhaps 
the most philosophical, but which is attended with many practical 
inconveniences to the tyro." This is the view held by Dr. Gray 
throughout his life, and it is doubtless largely through his influence 
that the reverse plan has become so popular in botanical teaching in 
this country. 
We would like to quote, if space permitted, from the review of 
Agassiz's "Nomenclator Zoologicus," some of the pointed remarks 
which are not yet out of date, and which reappear long after in the 
» Scientific Papers of Asa Gray, selected by Charles Sprague Sargeant. Vol. I., 
Reviews of Works on Botany and Related Subjects, 1834-1887, PP- viii.. 398. Vol. II., 
Essays ; Biographical Sketches, 1841-1886, pp iv., 504. Boston and New York, Hough- 
ton, Mifflin & Co. The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1889. 
