CHAPTER IV.
A DECADE OF WORK AT HOME.
1840-1850.
On Dr. Gray’s return from Europe, the University of Michigan not yet needing his services, he settled in New York to work on the “Flora of North America.”[122]
In 1841 he made his first journey to the mountains of North Carolina, of which he wrote an account in the “American Journal of Science” in the form of a letter to Sir William Hooker.
The country west of the Mississippi was just now opened to exploration, and for some years continued to afford an immense amount of new material to the botanist. Dr. Gray, and his friends Dr. Torrey and Dr. Engelmann especially, interested themselves in sending collectors with the various expeditious, explorations, boundary surveys, etc., and were kept very hard at work in studying and distributing the several collections as they came in. The difficulties of communication were great, postage was very dear, and the post-office rule that sheets, no matter of what size, could be sent as one letter, while the addition of any separate inclosure was utterly forbidden, added difficulties almost insurmountable to the transmission of any specimen. Even as late as 1850 the large parcels from St. Louis were sent by steamboat to New Orleans and then by sailing vessel to New York or Boston.
Foreign communication was not much better, as Dr. Gray writes to Sir William Hooker in March, 1840: “I have been waiting during the winter to write by some of the steamships, but they have disappointed us, and, though long expected, none reached us until the arrival of the Great Western a week or more since, which brought us fifty-six days’ later intelligence from Europe.”
TO W. J. HOOKER.
NEW YORK, May 30, 1840.
I have been tolerably industrious for some years, but have never labored as I have done this winter and spring. But I look now for a little respite, which I greatly need. I have this afternoon written the description of the last plant we have to give in the 1st volume of the “Flora” (a new cucurbitaceous genus, of which more anon); have prepared the last sheet for the press,--that is, of the work proper, which reaches to page 656 instead of 550, as intended; and have before me proofs of the supplement extending to page 672; what is yet to come will make up the volume to 720 pages! It has extended beyond all calculations or bounds, but we could not stop short. I hope to have done with the proofs early next week, when I expect to go immediately into the country and recruit for three or four weeks, for I am quite fagged out. Except, however, mere fatigue and the usual consequences of loss of rest, I was never, perhaps, more perfectly in health, and a fortnight or so of botanizing will restore my strength. You kindly inquire about my plans and prospects. These are so far favorable that they will give me (D. V.) another year of nearly undivided attention to the “Flora.” Not long since I was officially informed that the opening of our university would be postponed another year, on account of unfavorable times, and the preparations not being sufficiently advanced. So I am told that I can have my time nearly all to myself until next spring (1841) if I wish (which of course I do), but without any salary, which, indeed, I could not with any propriety take while I perform no duty. By very close economy I think I shall get on for the year to come, and be able to accomplish a good deal of botanical work. I am going to pay the Michigan people a visit, and if they make good their promises made to me a year ago, as I have reason to think they will, their course towards me will have been liberal and honorable. I have good reason to hope they will eventually succeed in their plans.
By the London packet of the 15th of June we hope to send you and other friends some copies of the “Flora,” parts 3 and 4. There are so many errors, so much bad printing, and so many things that we could now do much better, that I regret that any portion was published before my visit to Europe. Many of the most important corrections are given with additions, etc., in a supplement, but I hope we shall continue to improve as we go on. We can work to much greater advantage than before, from being much better supplied with books, as well as with specimens and information. Yet often do I wish to be within reach of your herbarium and library. Long accustomed to these advantages, you can scarcely appreciate the difficulties we often find. I was to-day wishing for a look at your Cucurbitaceæ; we have, as you know, but few of the order.
I shall not be able to visit Florida or any part of the Southern States this summer; indeed, I fear I shall be debarred from any botanical journeys for some years. I must direct all my time and strength to our “Flora.” I hope we may complete another volume by the spring of next year. The way seems to be opening for increased facilities in sending a botanical collector to the Rocky Mountains. Our government is about to establish a line of military outposts quite up to the source of the Platte, in the principal pass of the mountains; and in a few years I doubt not we shall have small colonies in Oregon; but I know not when we shall be able to send a collector. I would like vastly to go after Grayia myself, but that cannot be at present. Nuttall has been giving a course of botanical lectures in Boston; and still remains there, I believe. My attempts to find Wilson’s poem have not yet been successful. I shall esteem it a piece of good fortune if I succeed. I have engaged a friend of mine, a bookseller, also to search for it; and when I visit Philadelphia I shall inquire of some old people who knew Wilson. May God bless you, my dear friend; kindest, regards and affectionate sympathies to Lady Hooker.
Faithfully your attached,
A. GRAY.
TO ALPHONSE DE CANDOLLE.
NEW YORK, September 15, 1840.
MY DEAR FRIEND.... I had not forgotten our conversation on the subject of geographical botany. On my return I found I had a copy, a mere proof, of the little article I spoke of, and was about to offer it to you, but on examination it appeared to me much less important than I had supposed and perhaps led you to expect. But as it may be of some little use, I now beg you to accept it. I have added, here and there, the scientific names when the popular names only were mentioned.
The question you suggest as to the effect of the destruction of the forests on the climate is very interesting, and I think still unanswered. I fear it will be next to impossible to obtain data, even in this country, for its satisfactory determination. There are very few thermometrical observations on record of sufficient extent or exactness, except for the last eight or ten years. For a year or two I shall not be able to pay any attention to these subjects except to collect materials. But I am very desirous to afford you any aid in my power, and will attend to any suggestions you make, obtain any data which come in my way, or secure the services of our botanical correspondents scattered throughout our extended country. Pray tell me how I can aid you. The annual reports of the regents of the University of the State of New York are documents submitted annually to our legislature, and printed at their expense for public use. They relate chiefly to the condition of our colleges and higher schools, but for six or perhaps nine years past have also embodied the results of the meteorological observations made throughout the State under their instructions. The “Reports” are not on sale, and the earlier numbers are not to be obtained except by some lucky chance....
The 3d and 4th parts of our “Flora,” of which you speak so favorably, were sent to you through Baron Delessert, as I have already apprised you. By the time this work is completed we shall have settled somewhat accurately the geographical range of our plants, and have laid a good foundation for the comparison of our flora with that of other regions, etc. We shall soon begin to print the “Compositæ,” and I trust in early spring we may see the second volume nearly or quite completed. Pray send me sometimes loose sheets of your articles or notices (those of your father and yourself) in the “Bibliothèque Universelle.” I will sometimes translate them, if you do not object, or otherwise notice them, for the “American Journal of Science and Arts.”
TO W. J. HOOKER.
NEW YORK, 15th January, 1841.
The dedication of the “Flora” we felt to be both a privilege and a duty; its favorable reception on your part gives us real pleasure.
I hope I have not offended Link by overstating his age. I am pretty sure I was so informed by Klotzsch who ought to know. You will now and then see some little articles or notices of mine in “Silliman’s Journal.” I prepare these notices merely to awaken and deepen the interest of our scattered botanists and lovers of plants, most of whom see that journal, and few of whom have any other means of knowing what is going on in the botanical world. We have, however, a few promising fellows who take the “Journal of Botany” or something of the kind. Should I have anything to communicate of interest to any other than our local botanists, I shall publish of course under my own name. You will receive with this a little notice of some European herbaria, which, commonplace as it must be on your side of the water, is useful to our own people. I have been as brief as I could, and have taken the pains to drop the first person singular. I am not sure but I have already sent you a copy through Mr. Pamphlin. Poor Rafinesque,[123] you know, perhaps, is dead; and I have attempted the somewhat ungracious task of giving some account of his botanical writings, which I will send you when printed.
I find that Townsend, Nuttall’s companion, published, while I was abroad, an account of their journey. I have never seen a copy, and am told it is out of print; but I must try to find a copy for you. Townsend being poor, Nuttall waived his intention of publishing in his favor. I have heard that Townsend wishes to make a journey as collector of birds, plants, etc. I wish he would go to the southern Rocky Mountains, and trace them into New Spain. Nuttall has brought home the Grayia. Have you ever received any more of Nuttall’s plants, or has Boott? He is selling them to different persons for ten dollars per hundred; just such specimens as you received through Boott, or sometimes much better and more copious ones. I have some of his Compositæ in my hands, which Webb has ordered. He has a considerable number of Oregon and Californian Compositæ which Douglas did not get (and he failed to meet with many of Douglas’s), and others in the States; as Pyrrocoma with rays. Nuttall ought to send all these to you.... I know with considerable accuracy what plants (Compositæ) are desiderata with you; and I will take the liberty of writing at once to Nuttall, and asking for such in your name. I shall ask for about one hundred Compositæ, and will extend the order to other plants if you desire it. He has, however, distributed nothing beyond Compositæ. Pray let me know at once if I have done rightly in this....
Among Drummond’s Louisiana plants is the rarest of all United States Compositæ, Stokesia cyanea. It was pointed out to me by Arnott (January, 1839), but I have just examined Greene’s specimens.
A. G.
NEW YORK, 20th May, 1841.
I have diligently labored about four months at Aster, in which, as I have after all not satisfied myself, I can scarcely hope to satisfy others; but I do think I have laid a foundation for the student of the species in their wild state. We had very copious materials, but could have done little in comparison without the aid of your collection, for which we cannot be too grateful. I am now occupied with Solidago, which is difficult enough, no doubt but not to be compared with Aster in this respect, partly because there are fewer species, and the synonymy much less involved, but chiefly because there are few in cultivation.
We rejoice to hear that Joseph and the Antarctic Expedition are getting on so well....
No further tidings of the steamship President! We have not until now surrendered all hope. One of the passengers, a stranger to me, but an acquaintance of a friend of mine, had charge of a small parcel for you, consisting chiefly of proof sheets.
October 15, 1841.
I will send by the next London packet (Quebec) and write more at leisure. I have to-day sent on board that ship a box for Pamphlin, containing a parcel of plants for you (all of any consequence of my small Carolina collection with some others). Few as they are, I trust it will give me a pleasure I seldom can enjoy--that of adding something to your herbarium. Mr. Brydges takes also for you the proofs of a gossiping article on the botany of the southern Alleghanies, etc., which I have taken the liberty to address to you, and hope it will meet your approval. I shall send you clean copies, as soon as they are printed. The article will not appear here until the 1st of January. I send you also some ripe seeds of Diphylleia for your garden. I have live roots in the care of a cultivator. If they live shall send you one in the spring....
I must not forget to mention that my package also comprises a set of Ohio Mosses from my friend Sullivant, of whom I have often spoken, and of whom as a botanist we have high hopes, as he has an independence (for this country), talent, and much zeal. If not too much trouble, I join with him in requesting you to name them according to the numbers, by which you will do him great service, as he designs to study and collect American Musci especially.
TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.
NEW YORK, November 30, 1841.
DEAR DOCTOR,--Don’t hesitate about sending me anything for fear I may already have it. Very many plants pass through my hands while I am describing, but my own herbarium is not very rich; and duplicates will not oppress me. Mr. Carey does not keep European plants except those identical, or supposed identical, with North American species. Browne, however, does, and I dare say would be glad to have any you can give him. They are the gentlemen mentioned in the “Flora.” ...
Eupatorium Engelmannianum, sp. nov. Am. Bor., semina misit Engelmann. Can this be it, think you? If so pray help me to it; and to anything else you can, as I mean to give addenda et corrigenda to the Compositæ at the end of the order, if I ever get through this formidable job. No wonder seven years’ labor at them ruined De Candolle’s health. You know he is dead? He died the 9th or 10th of September last....
I send you my article in the January number of “Silliman’s Journal” with a little one by Sullivant,--by mail. I am extremely busy this winter, but I hope always to answer your letters promptly, and to attend to your desires as well as I can, whence I beg you to continue your useful correspondence.
March 30, 1842.
It is not a great while since I got all the copy ready for the number of the “Flora” now printing,--during which I could do little else. Immediately this was done I completed an arrangement with my publishers for preparing a handsomely got up Introduction or Text-Book of Botany, for schools, lectures, private students (medical, etc.), which must be out on the 1st of May next. Owing to illness I have as yet written almost nothing, and besides have to superintend all the drawings, as they must be made by a person unacquainted with botany; and at the same time I have to correct the proofs of about thirteen sheets yet of the “Flora,” so that I am almost distracted when I think how I am to accomplish it here, where I have to see personally to almost every detail. But I must do it, as I hope to lay the foundation for a popular and--what is of consequence to me--a profitable work.
TO W. J. HOOKER.
NEW YORK, 30th March, 1842.
The last steamship left Boston so soon after I received your kind letter that I was unable to answer it by that conveyance. I intended to send this by the Columbia steamer of the 2d prox.; but I learn that having broken her shaft in the outward voyage she is to sail back to England; when it comes to canvas I have more confidence in our old liners, and therefore send by New York packet.
Have you not seen or heard of Nuttall yet? He sailed for England on Christmas last, to take possession of property left him by some deceased relatives.
I should not feel a residence in Michigan as a banishment. I am fond of a country life. But at present I see almost no hopes of usefulness there. Like all our new, and some of our old States, they have squandered the means they once possessed and encumbered themselves almost irretrievably with debt. On my return from Europe in the autumn of 1839, I received a letter stating that they had nothing yet for me to do, and permitting me to spend the winter in New York. In the spring of 1840, a committee of the regents wrote to me, to relinquish the provisional salary (of fifteen hundred dollars, on which I had been placed) for one year from that date, they relinquishing my services for that period and allowing me to devote my time to the “Flora,” etc. I at once accepted their proposal; but although another year has now elapsed since the expiration of the period to which they proposed to limit this agreement, not a word have I heard officially or unofficially from Michigan. I have quietly awaited the result, ready at any moment to obey their call; but having no income for the last two years, I have been greatly embarrassed, and have struggled through great difficulties, I scarcely know how. Notwithstanding, I have thought until recently that I ought not to seek any other situation. I shall now write to Michigan immediately, inquiring whether, in their present condition, they are ready to fulfill their engagements with me, or whether they would prefer to accept my resignation, which I shall offer. I expect, and on the whole hope, they will accept it.
In December, or nearly the 1st of January last, a friend of mine here, who had some casual conversation with the President of Harvard University, wished me to let my name be known as a candidate for the vacant chair of natural history there. After reflecting for a week or two, I wrote to B. D. Greene[124] for some information on the subject, saying that, if freed from other engagements, I would like the botanical part of the professorship, but not the zoölogy: and that the former, with the charge and the renovation of the Botanic Garden, would be quite enough for one.
In January I made a flying visit to Boston, where I had never been, and knew no one personally but Greene, to whom, and to Professor Bigelow,[125] I expressed my views; but we none of us expected that anything would be done at present. I incidentally learned, however, not long since, that the men of science would generally be well pleased to have me at Boston, and that some with whom I had almost no acquaintance were using their influence to that end. I was never more surprised, however, than this very evening, when I received from President Quincy an official letter, offering me the professorship provisionally, with a small salary, to be sure, for the present, but with only the duties of the botanical portion.
The president states that the endowment is $30,000, yielding an income of $1,500, which, however, not being adequate to constitute a full professor’s salary on a permanent foundation, the corporation deem it both their duty and the interest of the professorship to continue for a few years, in a modified form, the policy they have hitherto pursued, and by applying one third of the income annually to the augmentation of the capital, enable themselves to place the professor of natural history, at no distant period, on an equal footing with the other professors of the university. “To this end they propose to limit your duties, in case you are willing to accept the professorship, to instruction and lecturing in botany, and to the superintendence generally of the Botanic Garden (which they wish to renovate); limiting for the present your annual salary to one thousand dollars;” thus enabling me, as the communication proceeds to say, to devote all my time at present to my favorite pursuit, and to go on with the labors I have in hand. I have reason to hope, also, that by the time they are ready to give me the full salary, the zoölogical part will be separated from the professorship, with a distinct endowment. The Botanic Garden has an endowment of $20,000. If I should take this place, I should hope to see it better endowed before long, and should immediately set about the introduction of all the hardy trees and shrubs,--and indeed to enrich it as fast as possible with all the American and other plants that could be procured. In that case, separated from yourself by only fourteen to eighteen days’ navigation, I could hope to be a useful correspondent to you at Kew, and to show my gratitude for your continued kindness to me. I must here conclude, by stating that the president’s letter to me is to be deemed confidential, in case I do not accept the offer. I must therefore beg you to consider this letter likewise confidential, until you hear further from me, which you may expect to do as soon as anything is settled in regard to this matter. I am the less reluctant to leave New York since our good friend Dr. Torrey is at Princeton, New Jersey (only four hours from New York), renting his house in town, where for the present he will only remain during the winter. We have worked so long together that I shall feel the separation greatly.
NEW YORK, 30th May, 1842.
I have the pleasure to inform you that having accepted the offer from Harvard University of which I apprised you in my letter of April 1, I was appointed to the professorship on the 30th of April last. The incessant occupation of this month has prevented me from writing to you sooner, and still prevents me sending anything beyond this hasty note. I hope in a week or so to have my new text-book finished, when I shall visit Cambridge to make the necessary arrangements for my removal thither. I hope hereafter to be a useful correspondent to you, in the way of supplying you with seeds and living plants of our own country, and when I see what can be done with our Garden I shall probably ask you to aid us. I wish to visit the mountains of Carolina again, in autumn, to procure roots and seeds....
* * * * *
In the spring of 1842, as his last letter intimated, Dr. Gray was appointed to the Fisher professorship of natural history in Harvard College. He was then thirty-one years old. He removed to Cambridge in July, taking lodgings near the colleges at Deacon Munroe’s, on what is now James Street.
Before Dr. Gray came to Cambridge he had been elected into the American Academy (November 10, 1841). He threw himself with the greatest interest into its work. Scarcely any winter storm kept him from its meetings; all other engagements had to give way. And when new life began in its publications, many of his most important papers appeared in its volumes.
He was also influential in establishing a scientific club consisting of members of the college faculty and
other friends in Cambridge. Of this, too, he was a most faithful member. The club met twice a month at the houses of the different members in turn, and the one at whose house it met was expected to bring forward some subject, generally from his specialty, which later was discussed and criticised. Many of the new interests in science were here first presented by Dr. Gray.
Among the founders and early members were, Charles Beck, Francis Bowen, Admiral Davis, Epes S. Dixwell, Edward Everett, President Felton, Asa Gray, Simon Greenleaf, Thaddeus Mason Harris, Joseph Lovering, Benjamin Peirce, Josiah Quincy, Jared Sparks, Daniel Treadwell, James Walker, Joseph E. Worcester, the lexicographer, and Morrill Wyman, M. D. Later, among those no longer living, were added at different times Louis Agassiz, Thomas Hill, Joel Parker, Emory Washburn, and Joseph Winlock. The club is still in existence.
TO JOHN TORREY.
BOSTON, Monday, 25th July, 1842.
MY DEAR DOCTOR,--Having time before the mail closes to write a harried letter, I hasten to let you know that I have this morning secured lodgings at Cambridge, at a retired house, off the main road, about halfway between the colleges and the Garden. For $3.00 per week, I have two rooms, one pretty large, one moderate (of which I shall make a bedroom), a small nearly dark bedroom which I shall shelve and use for my herbarium, and three closets, furnished decently (but not extravagantly!!), in a house where there can at most be only one other lodger, and he must ascend by a different staircase from mine,--the rooms and bed linen, etc., to be kept in order.
I am to board at an adjacent house, to which I have access by a private gate through the garden. The latter house belongs to Mrs. Peck (widow of my predecessor), who boards there, and who I see has bestirred herself to contrive and effect this arrangement. I am to take possession next Monday. Meanwhile I am Mr. Greene’s guest here, where I have the house for the most part to myself. I arrived here Friday morning, just in time to miss the president, who had just started for Portland, and has not yet returned. I have seen Bigelow, Emerson,[126] etc., and have been looking about among the libraries here, and endeavoring to arrange matters so as to procure just, and only such, books for the college as are wanting. I am pleased to find a complete copy of “Linnæa” at the library of the American Academy.
I passed last Sunday all alone in Greene’s house. Mr. Emerson met me coming from Park Street Church, and on telling him that I was of Orthodox faith, he said he was very glad of it, although not altogether of that way himself.
I have been only twice to Cambridge, whence I have just returned, and where you may address your letters. But I can do little there until the president returns, by which time, however, I must trust to have my list of books ready. I have just written to Mr. Wiley to send on my boxes, and hope next week to get nearly in working order. I now think of remaining here (studying Compositæ, etc.) through the month of August, and then visiting Mt. Washington, if I can get money and a companion (I shall ask Oakes), and in September going (via New York?) to western New York, where I wish to collect roots and seeds as extensively as may be. I will soon make out a list of some things I would like Knieskern to get for me in the pine barrens.
Tell E., also, that I must write her about a learned lady in these parts, who assists her husband in his school, and who hears the boys’ recitations in Greek and geometry at the ironing-board, while she is smoothing their shirts and jackets! reads German authors while she is stirring her pudding, and has a Hebrew book before her, when knitting [? netting--A. G.]. There’s nothing like down East for learned women. Why, even the factory-girls at Lowell edit entirely a magazine, which an excellent judge told me has many better-written articles than the “North American Review.” Some of them, having fitted their brothers for college at home, come to Lowell to earn money enough to send them through!! Vivent les femmes. There will be no use for men in this region, presently. Even my own occupation may soon be gone; for I am told that Mrs. Ripley (the learned lady aforesaid) is the best botanist of the country round. But the mail is about to close; this nasty steel pen refuses to write; dinner is ready, and so with love to all, I subscribe myself,
Yours most affectionately, A. GRAY.
TO W. J. HOOKER.
CAMBRIDGE, 30th July, 1842.
MY DEAR SIR WILLIAM,--It is indeed a long time since I have heard from you; although, indeed, I can well suppose that, in your new situation,[127] you are too much occupied to write frequently to your friends on this side of the ocean. Having finished my little “Botanical Text-Book” (a copy of which is sent you through the publishers, Wiley & Putnam, who have an office in Stationer’s Court, Paternoster Row), and packed up my things at New York, I have just taken possession of my situation at Cambridge. The Botanic Garden, which has a good location, contains over seven acres of land, and the trees have well grown up. It already contains some good American plants, and I shall immediately commence a plan of operations with the view of accumulating here, as fast as possible, the phænogamous plants, etc., of the United States and Canada; and hope to supply you with such of our indigenous species as you may desire. I wish I could know what plants are likely to be acceptable to you, that I may not send you what you already have. I must postpone to next year my contemplated visit to the mountains of Carolina, where I can make a fine collection of interesting plants for cultivation. Perhaps I can also visit Labrador next year. This autumn I must confine myself to an excursion to the White Mountains, to the western part of New York, and to the pine barrens of New Jersey. I shall most gladly share the seeds and roots I collect with you. My good friend Mr. Sullivant, also promises me the living Sullivantia and many other interesting plants.
Let me also say, my dear sir, that any duplicates you can spare us from your noble institution will be truly acceptable and in the highest degree useful to us, as we have very few exotics and hot-house plants. We have a good gardener, and I think I can promise you that whatever you choose to give us shall be sedulously taken care of.
Dr. Torrey is now at Princeton. I had the pleasure of spending a week with him not long since, and hope to visit him again early in the autumn. I shall miss him very much. I am here more favorably situated with respect to books than at New York. I hope next week to begin again with the “Flora,” and perhaps to finish the Monopetalæ.
TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.
CAMBRIDGE, 26th July, 1842.
MY DEAR DOCTOR,--I hope to get settled here, and in working order in a week or so; to work at Compositæ, all next month, and to occupy a part of September and October in collecting the roots and seeds of plants, of the White Mountains, of western New York, etc., for our Botanic Garden here; which I wish to renovate, to make creditable to the country and subservient to the advancement of our favorite science. I wish to see growing here all the hardy and half-hardy plants of the United States (as well as many exotics, etc.), and shall exert myself strenuously for their introduction. The Garden contains seven acres; the trees and shrubs are well grown up; we are free from debt, and have a small fund. The people and the corporation are anxious that we should do something, and I trust will second our efforts.
Allow me therefore to say that yourself and your friend Lindheimer[128] in Texas would render me, and also the cause of botany in this country, the greatest aid (which I will take every opportunity of publicly acknowledging), if you will send me roots or seeds of any Western plants, especially the rarer, and those not yet figured or cultivated abroad. But nothing peculiar to the West and South will come amiss. I am calling on all my correspondents to assist me in this matter; which, by giving me the opportunity of examining so many living plants, will vastly increase the correctness of our “Flora.” I shall not be idle myself. I will defray all expenses of collection and transportation (boxes may be sent via New Orleans, directly to me at Boston). If you wish to cultivate anything that I have or can procure, it shall be forthcoming. Pray let me hear from you on this subject.
TO JOHN TORREY.
CAMBRIDGE, 15th September, 1842.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--Your letter of the 6th inst. awaited my return from the White Mountains last evening, and I must drop you a hasty reply by this day’s mail. I started for the mountains almost at a moment’s warning. Emerson, who was to accompany me, being called down to Maine, wrote me unexpectedly to meet him on Monday or Tuesday of last week at the Notch. I had just time to look up Tuckerman,[129] the very morning of his arrival! and to get his consent to meet me on Monday morning at the cars for Dover. Monday evening we reached Conway, New Hampshire, thirty miles from the White Mountains (full in sight); and Tuesday, in a one-horse wagon, we reached and botanized up the Notch to Crawford’s at its head. Emerson had been there, and returned to his father’s in Maine, having learned his brother’s arrival from France in the ship that brought Tuckerman. We made two ascents to the higher mountains; slept out one night; cold weather; a good deal of rain, but had some very fine weather for views. We saw the ocean distinctly, which is only possible under favorable circumstances. I made a fine collection of living plants, which was the chief object. Although too late for botanizing, yet I got many good alpines in fruit, some few in flower. When I see you, which I trust will be soon, I will tell you particulars, and bring specimens of the few plants collected that will be needed in your herbarium.
I have seen the president this morning, and find that Mr. Lowell has returned, but all are so busy that I doubt if they will settle anything about our affairs until the last of next week. Consequently I shall be kept here all next week. I shall immediately, at Mr. Quincy’s desire, or rather approval of my intimation, draw up a plan of my wishes for the management of the Garden, and shall ask for a specific appropriation, of small amount, for obtaining live plants, paying bills of transportation, etc. If I succeed, I may then be able to engage Knieskern to procure some New Jersey plants, as well as go to western New York myself; but I fear this delay, with the advancing season, will perhaps prevent the latter.
Saturday afternoon, 5th December, 1842.
The parcel of Compositæ, etc., of the Far West has only just come in. I have looked over the Compositæ with some excitement. Some few new and the old help out Nuttall’s scraps, etc., very well. Tetradymias this side of the Rocky Mountains!! Some new Senecios, especially, from the mountains, near the snow line. How I would like to botanize up there!...
I wish we had a collector to go with Frémont. It is a great chance. If none are to be had, Lieutenant F. must be indoctrinated, and taught to collect both dried specimens and seeds. Tell him he shall be immortalized by having the 999th Senecio called S. Fremontii; that’s _poz._, for he has at least two new ones....
I have the privilege of expending one hundred dollars in botanical illustrations,--to be the property of the college and to be increased from time to time. How do you advise me to proceed in the matter?
Though greatly behindhand, I must get Compositæ all done this month. Then if you could have the Lobelias and Campanulas ready, I think we could print the latter part of January, and I get everything off my mind and ready for teaching 1st of March....
This letter you see has no beginning, as I have scribbled down memoranda for a day or two past, as they occurred to me. I am deep among Thistles, which are thorny (though I see that they are satisfactionable, all but one little group of two or three species), and have been considerably interrupted, or I should have written you sooner.
TO MRS. TORREY.
CAMBRIDGE, Wednesday evening, December 14, 1842.
It is some time since I have written to Princeton, and longer since I have heard from any of you; for I believe you are every one in my debt. This, however, has not restrained me from writing, and I have only waited until a proposition very unexpectedly made me a few days ago should be disposed of. I have been invited to lecture before the Lowell Institute next year, and have had the hardihood to accept! A celebrated lawyer here says that he never hesitates to take any case that offers, to be argued six months hence! I have taken this in much the same way. But when the time draws near I dare say I shall call myself a very great fool. But it is now neck or nothing. The money will be really very useful to me; to decline the offer, coming from one of the most influential of the corporation of the college, would have had an unfavorable effect on my prospects, which moderate success will greatly advance. The pay is $1,000 for twelve lectures, or $1,200 if they are repeated in the afternoons. Instead of the latter, I have proposed to give a collateral, more scientific course of about twenty lectures, with a small ticket-fee to render the audience more select, and for which I should get about $500, making $1,500 in all. The Institute will pay for full illustrations. Mr. Lowell offered at once to engage me for two or three years; but I told him he had best wait to see how I succeeded. Mr. Lowell told me that he was in treaty with two of the most distinguished orthodox divines in this country for courses on Natural Theology and the Evidences of Christianity; the one to commence next year, the other the year after. I do not doubt one is President Wayland. Who can the other be? Tell Dr. Torrey he hopes to get Faraday next year; and Mr. Owen the year after.
I should not wonder if my appointment were in some degree owing to a little piece of generosity in a small way that I played off not long since. The president has once or twice asked me to hear the Freshmen next term in a course of recitations from a text-book on general natural history as a matter of favor, as he did not wish Mr. Harris or any one else to perform this duty; and offering me, of course, additional compensation, I suppose $200 or so. I found, however, that this pay would come from the funds of the Garden, let who would perform the duty. So to prevent that, I offered to perform the duty, but to receive no pay for it. At the same time, however, I got the corporation to appropriate $100 for illustrative botanical drawings, which otherwise would have come out of my own pocket. So you see I have work enough ahead, if I live, to give me both occupation and anxiety. I have been driving away at the “Flora,” of late, very hard, hoping to come to New York to print next month; when all this matter must be laid aside, and I must prepare for my lectures, etc., for next term, which commences about the first of March.
I am very tired, having been in Boston all day,--at tea at Mr. Albro’s, our good pastor, where I met Mr. Dana, father of “Two Years before the Mast” Dana, and passed the rest of the evening at Professor Peirce’s.[130] To-morrow I hope to have for study; but the next day I shall be obliged to go again to Boston, and perhaps stay till evening for a soirée at Mr. Ticknor’s.
The Latimer case has greatly increased the abolition feeling in this State, besides showing that the recent decision of the Supreme Court will in fact operate in favor of the runaway slave. It is not probable that another slave will ever be again captured in Massachusetts. There is a petition to Congress in circulation, designed simply to express the feelings of Massachusetts, which will probably be signed by almost every person in the State.
TO JOHN TORREY.
CAMBRIDGE, January 3, 1843.
Your letter, truly welcome after so long an interval, reached me yesterday. I should have been very glad to be with you during the holidays, but cannot think of leaving before I finish these interminable Compositæ. I hoped to have accomplished this on Saturday last; all but taking up some dropped stitches; but was a good deal interrupted last week. The December number of “Annals and Magazine of Natural History” (of which Professor Balfour is the botanical editor) contains a very complimentary notice of the “Botanical Text-Book,” accompanied with a few judicious selections, which shows that the writer has looked it over carefully; and winds up by terming it the best elementary treatise (as to structural botany) in the English language. So easy is it to get praise where it is not particularly deserved!...
My great object for next year is to attempt to raise $10,000 from some of our rich men, to rebuild our greenhouse on a larger and handsome scale. There are a few men, who have never given anything to the college, who may perhaps be induced to give for this object.
TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., February 13, 1843.
I note with interest what you propose in regard to Lindheimer’s collections for sale in Centuriæ, fall into your plans, and will advertise in “Silliman’s Journal” (and in “London Journal of Botany”) when all is arranged. Pray let him get roots and seeds for me. I will do all I can for him. But if the Oregon bill passes, a party under Lieutenant Frémont, or some one else, will go through the Rocky Mountains to Oregon; and parties of emigrants or explorers will go also. Now why not send Lindheimer in some of these? Probably the government party would afford him protection, and probably he might be formally attached to the party. Frémont will not take Geyer;[131] but I believe he wants some one. The interesting region (the most so in the world) is the high Rocky Mountains about the sources of the Platte, and thence south. I will warrant ten dollars per hundred for every decent specimen. If he collects in Texas, eight dollars per hundred is enough. I write in haste, hoping this plan may strike you favorably and be found practicable. Let me know at once. The opportunity should not be lost. Do send Lindheimer to the Rocky Mountains if possible.
TO W. J. HOOKER.
CAMBRIDGE, February 28, 1843.
I found your most welcome letter on my return from New York a few weeks since, and have since sent it to Dr. Torrey, who was equally delighted with myself at the opportunity of hearing from you.
Our term opens to-day, and I am just on the point of commencing my course of botanical lectures, which is rather formidable to a beginner. So you will excuse my hasty letter. I would not miss to-morrow’s steamer, as I wish to say that your offer to furnish our Garden--the great object of my care--with hardy plants from your rich stores at Kew delights me much. I have only to say that everything you can send will be truly welcome. Our stock of European hardy plants (whether herbs or shrubs) is small, and consists of the commonest and oldest-fashioned things in cultivation. These, and every Californian, Oregon, and Texan plant of which you have duplicates to spare us (or seeds), whether hardy or not,--these are the plants I am just now most desirous to accumulate. Greenhouse plants are scarcely less welcome, but of those I will write more particularly hereafter. Can you send us a young Araucaria imbricata and Stuartia pentagyna?
My plans for accumulating American plants were put in operation too late last autumn to give us much as yet, but my correspondents throughout the country seem interested in the matter; some will reach me this spring, and still more, I trust, in the autumn. With regard to all these, as soon as I see them growing, so that I can send them with authentic names, I shall most gladly share with you.... I shall continue to direct all my energies to the advancement of our amiable science in this country, not, I trust, in vain. I have a plan to publish, from time to time, figures of rare or interesting North American plants, chiefly those cultivated in our Garden and those upon which I may throw some light. I think there are persons enough here interested in the matter, including gentlemen of public spirit here, who would encourage it for the Garden’s sake, to nearly defray the expense, which is all I desire or expect....
What a charming place you must be making of Kew! What a field for the botanist!
TO MRS. TORREY.
Thursday evening, 2d March, 1843.
You will be anxious to hear how my first lecture succeeded, knowing it was to have been given to-day.[132] But you must wait a week longer. Since my last letter was dispatched the president, finding the class would hardly be ready, desired me merely to meet them to-day for the purpose of pointing out the subject in the “Text-Book,” arranging general plan and all that, postponing my lecture to Thursday of next week. This I was most ready to do, as it gave me the opportunity of entering by degrees upon my task, feeling my way instead of making a plunge in regular desperation. The great thing is self-possession. The moment I get that I shall feel tolerably safe. So I met my class to-day, arranged matters, and made a few remarks without stammering a bit, so far as I recollect, or speaking much too fast. My class consists of about two dozen students (undergraduates), mostly Seniors, besides which any law or divinity students and resident graduates who choose can attend, and several probably will. For my recitations in natural history generally, I have divided the Freshmen into four sections, about sixteen in each, two of which I meet on Fridays, and two on Tuesdays; have given them their lessons, and to-morrow, consequently, I commence these recitations. I must not forget to tell you that since my return the Sunday-school class left by one of our people who has removed to Boston has been given me, a class of eight or nine very intelligent misses, varying from sixteen years old to twelve, all of one family, though originally of three, some being sister’s children (orphans, etc.). I am greatly pleased with them, delighted with their docility and intelligence, and anticipate a very happy time. So you see I have three sets of scholars, on different subjects. I ought to be “apt to teach.”
Saturday morning.--I must dispatch my letter by to-day’s mail, and as I am going to Boston, where I have not been for a week, I will drop it in the post office there, to insure its transmission by this afternoon’s mail. Yesterday afternoon I met the first two sections of my class of Freshmen for recitation. It went off very well. I am pretty good at asking questions. The lads were well prepared. Next Tuesday I meet the third and fourth sections; and on Thursday, the ides of March, I give my first lecture on Botany. If I succeed well, I am sure no one will be more pleased and gratified than yourself, and that of itself is enough to incite me to effort. If I don’t altogether succeed, neither satisfying myself nor others, I shall not be discouraged, but try again, as I am determined to succeed in the long run. Nil desperandum. I shall have the president to hear me; but he is said always to fall asleep on such occasions, and to be very commendatory when he awakes.
I now board with the sister of my landlord, Deacon Munroe, a table of only five, one professor, one tutor, and two advanced law students. We yesterday commenced the experiment of dining at five o’clock, much to my gratification, and if the other gentlemen like it as well as I do, we shall continue to dine at that hour, until summer at least. It is very cold here; though the sun shines brightly all day, it scarcely thaws at midday.
CAMBRIDGE, March 18, 1843.
Your most welcome and long-expected letter of the 14th reached me only this noon. This first day of leisure of this week has been a very busy one. I have been to town, and just got back. I have had to work very hard this week. I have got my course of recitations for the Freshmen on Smellie well in progress, and am quite interested in it, though at first I thought it would have been a great bore. The class are generally very much interested, and give promise that I shall reap the fruits of my labor when they become Sophomores or Seniors and attend the botanical lectures, for which I think I am laying a foundation. I am now perfectly at ease in my mode of teaching them; I am pretty good at questioning, and I give them plenty of illustration, explanation, and ideas not in the book, which pleases and interests them. In one of the divisions last week, while giving them a sort of lecture, two hours long! (to which they listened well; for I gave them, or those who chose, the opportunity of going at the expiration of the regular hour, but not one of them budged), turning my head at a fortunate moment, I caught one of the fellows (rather a stupid fellow, a boarder with me last term) throwing his cap to his companion or playing some trick. You know I can scold. So I gave him about half a dozen words that made him open his eyes wide; and I do not think that he, nor any of that division, will venture upon anything of the kind again very soon.
As to the botanical class, which now numbers thirty-seven, I have given two more lectures, for I lectured both Thursday and Friday, on the last occasion, which was a sort of recapitulation quite without notes, as a trial. I am convinced that for lectures with much illustration I must have only heads and leading ideas written; for others, I will write nearly in full. I saw Miss Lowell ... the day before my first lecture, and promised to call upon her very soon if I succeeded well. Meeting her the other evening at Professor Sparks’s, she reproved me for not keeping my word. I very honestly and sincerely replied that I had not succeeded well, and was waiting until I was better satisfied. Quite to my surprise, I found that the class, at least those she had seen, her great-nephew and others, were well pleased with it. I will not repeat their expressions, as retailed to me by Miss Lowell, because I cannot but suspect that young Lowell may have been trying to humbug her. I feel I have so far acquitted myself very poorly as a lecturer; but I am sustained by the firm conviction that I shall in the end do very well, for a common college class.
TO JOHN TORREY.
May, 1843.
I have been speaking about the bones of the Zygodon, and there is a disposition to get up a subscription in the Natural History Society and buy them, if still for sale, the price not too great, and if Dr. Wyman, on seeing them, recommends the purchase. Do you know the price? And whether they can still be seen in New York, at Carey’s storehouse? The Boston zoölogists are far from praising De Kay’s Report. I heard Silliman on electro-magnetism the other evening (which hardly belongs to chemistry): great show of experiments; lauded Henry finely. He is finishing off with galvanic deflagration. Will Frémont go west this year? So Mr. Carey is going to Buffalo. Occupation will be the best thing for him; but we shall miss him in New York....
Monday afternoon, 9th May.
I have a few of Frémont’s plants up from seeds. The two pine-trees and the Pyxidanthera were received in good condition, to my great wonderment. Pyxidanthera is in full bloom, and a drawing of it nearly finished (as well as of Oakesia, about which I have some new matters that are curious) by the eldest Miss Quincy, whom I have pressed into the service....
Rhododendron Lapponicum, from the White Mountains, is just bursting into flower. I am building rock-work, but we get on slowly. All the work of the Garden comes together this spring, and all in a heap.
TO W. J. HOOKER.
CAMBRIDGE, 30th May, 1843.
... The community here are very liberal and public-spirited. They have just given by subscription $25,000 for a telescope, etc., for our observatory. The college have given me the use of seven or eight acres of land lying around the observatory, finely situated and diagonally opposite the Botanic Garden, as an addition.[133]
As soon as our garden begins to increase and prosper, I hope in a year from this we shall attempt (and doubtless succeed) in raising the funds for a new conservatory, hot-house, etc.
TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.
CAMBRIDGE, 22d June, 1843.
When you get sufficient collections from any of these botanists for distribution, you will please forward me a set, with your own critical remarks. Although I excessively dislike to study special collections far ahead of my work, yet in these cases it will be important, and I will consent to do it. If I thus join in the responsibility and labor, which will be great to a person with his hands so full as mine, the articles written on the subject and the new species must bear our joint names.
You cannot have failed to perceive that the genus Astragalus is not well done in the “Flora.” ...
I agree with you generally in the impropriety of too much multiplying names of species after the collectors, etc., yet I think these are good names, easily remembered, and particularly advisable in very large genera. My practical rule is to name such species after the discoverer, etc., if I cannot find any really pertinent characteristic name unoccupied....
There is much to be done, and so little time that I often wish I could divide myself into a dozen men, and thus get on faster. Let us, however, take particular pains to do everything thoroughly as far as we go.
TO MRS. TORREY.
CAMBRIDGE, July 22, 1843.
I find Cambridge, in vacation, as quiet as possible,--most people away. The president’s family were at home, and unaffectedly glad to see me; but several of them, including Miss Susan, who makes drawings for me, are about to set out on Monday for Lake Champlain, Montreal, and Quebec; to be absent nearly to the time that I hope to leave here again; for I find, from the way the president takes it up, that I shall have no difficulty in obtaining the sanction of the corporation to my proposed mountain tour. But of that I shall know certainly in a day or two. In that case I shall hope to see you again in the latter part of August, perhaps as soon as the middle....
Dr.---- came here the day I returned. He still garnishes, as ever, his lack of ideas with a deliberate profundity of words.
I found on my return a letter from my brother, announcing the approaching marriage of my youngest sister; which event took place, I suppose, on the 20th inst., the day I left New York. Had I received the letter in New York, I should have arranged to be present on the occasion. I wonder if my turn will ever come!
TO W. J. HOOKER.
CAMBRIDGE, 11th August, 1843.
I leave home this afternoon for New York, on my way to the Alleghany Mountains in the north of Virginia, where I expect to meet my excellent friend Mr. Sullivant, of Ohio. We hope to trace the more westerly ranges of the mountains down to North Carolina and Tennessee, to revisit my old ground in Ashe County, etc., and to continue our journey farther south into Georgia, coming out at Augusta on the Savannah River; thence I may go to Charleston and return by water. But if time allows I shall perhaps run through upper Georgia and Alabama, to the Tennessee River, down that to the Ohio, and thence home. My chief object is to obtain live plants and seeds; we shall be too late in the season for the best botanizing, yet I think we shall be in the best time for Compositæ. Mr. Sullivant will turn his attention primarily to the Musci; but we shall let nothing escape. Thus at last I may hope to be somewhat useful to you as a correspondent for your Garden.
I learn within a few days that Ross’s expedition has been heard of from Rio. Doubtless Joseph will have reached home before this letter arrives, and I may congratulate him--and yourself--upon his most gratifying success, which has laid a broad and sure foundation for his scientific eminence. His Flora Antarctica must be of the very highest interest and importance.
TO JOHN TORREY.
ASHEVILLE, Saturday, September 30th, 1843.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--Your two letters which awaited my arrival--the one at Jefferson, the other at Asheville--were indeed refreshing. Our long journey through Virginia brought us behind our estimated time, and hurried the later and more interesting part of our operations; for Sullivant was getting very impatient, as I wrote in my last, just as we were hurrying away from Jefferson.
I doubt if I got anything of much interest in Virginia, except Buckley’s (and Nuttall’s) Andromeda, Rhamnus parvifolius on the waters of Green-brier, (where did Pursh get it?), Heuchera pubescens in fruit and Heuehera hispida Pursh!! out of flower and fruit, so that I detected it by the leaves only (and got good roots), not far from where Pursh discovered it, but more west, on the frontiers of a range of mountains where this very local species doubtless abounds.
From Jefferson went to Grandfather; had a fine time and good weather; explored the old fellow thoroughly, but found 140 new Phænogams. Sullivant made a great haul of Mosses and Jungermanniæ. Found the Moodys heartily glad to see us. The elder brother is married since our former visit. Miss Nancy delighted with the calico dress I brought her, and made me promise to ask some of my lady friends at home to cut out a pattern for her in newspaper and send by mail,--to be in tiptop style,--in the very height of the fashion! Poor Miss Nancy! How she would look! The “old gentleman” (Mr. Carey) was most affectionately inquired after. Indeed Miss Nancy is perfectly in love with him, and sacredly keeps the sperm-candle-end he gave her as a relic. She gave me a most amusing account of the wonderment which our visit caused. To it she attributes the advantages they now enjoy both for religious and secular instruction. For we found a young Episcopal clergyman, sent by the bishop, resident in the neighborhood, where he has spent already almost a year,--a perfect hermit, so far as civilized society goes. Yet he is busily occupied, and nearly contented, has built a little cabin in full view of the Gothic Grandfather, and I hope is doing much good. He accompanied us to the mountain, but did not remain over night in our encampment, having a distant service on Saturday. His name is Prout. Mrs. Torrey will remember something about his history, which will in part account for his willingness to spend a few years in this solitary region. I had hoped to hear him preach on the Sunday we passed at the Moodys’ on our return from the mountain; but he preached at a station ten miles off.
A. GRAY.
* * * * *
In one of his later mountain journeys Dr. Gray passed again through Val Crucis in June, 1879; and the following extract from Mrs. Gray’s journal gives the sad fate of the little mission colony.
“In the afternoon we came upon Val Crucis.... It seems, years ago (in 1841) when Dr. Gray, Mr. John Carey, and others came exploring in the mountains, Mr. Carey was laid up for a while in a farm-house, and talking with the good people found them woefully ignorant, especially of everything relating to Christianity. So when he went back to New York he corresponded with the Southern bishop, who bestirred himself, and a mission was sent into the mountains. They settled at Val Crucis, and so named it. It was in the early days of Ritualism, and the young men thought to found something like the early monastic settlements in England, and as it seemed to the ignorant people, played strange pranks and preached wonderful and incomprehensible doctrines which puzzled and bewildered them; then Bishop Ives went over to the Catholic Church, and it all died out; and here is the church (the rude timber church), with still a few members, but all the farms and settlements passed into other hands--as far as I could make out into the hands of a rich old man, who lives anything but a holy life, and whose boarding-house for the saw-mill hands in Val Crucis is an awful degradation! I saw at the Duggers a large old Bible, and on it printed ‘Society of the Holy Cross, Val Crucis,’ which the children were using to paste stories and pictures in!”
* * * * *
The journal continues:--
Monday and Tuesday.--Crossed the Blue Ridge, descended John’s River, and went to near the base of Table Mountain. Wednesday, ascended it. Was fortunate enough to get Hudsonia montana, specimens and roots; also a few roots of Thermopsis fraxinifolia. While digging one of these near the base of the mountain, struck upon a little clump of Schweinitzia, half buried in the leaves, five or six specimens; but a long hunt furnished no more.
Thursday, crossed Linville River in sight of the North Cove (Michaux’s old residence) and went to Carson’s on the Catawba. We lost a shoe from our black horse while descending the Blue Ridge, and he wore his hoof so as to lame him severely. Obliged to leave him at Carson’s (as we could not exchange him to advantage) and hire another horse to take his place for a week. Crossed the Swananoa gap; got fine near view of Black Mountain; passed the night not far from its base (twelve miles from Asheville). Should have ascended, but could not do it so as to get back Saturday night to any place to stay, and longed to spend one Sunday in a civilized place where we could attend public worship. So went on to Asheville to dinner; passed Saturday afternoon in taking care of our plants. Heard very good preaching at the Methodist church on Sunday. Monday set out down the French Broad. Tuesday reached the Warm Springs; got a luxurious bath. Rode the afternoon through the rain to Paint Rock, etc.; stayed the night in Tennessee below. Got Buckleya in fruit, and other things I can’t now specify. Wednesday, dug up Buckleyas, etc. Left Mr. Sullivant at Warm Springs, who, not being able to bear the absence from his wife and children longer, has left me alone with the team, and is by this time more than halfway to Columbus. Thursday, returned to Asheville. Friday, packed a fine box of roots, with which my wagon was loaded. Sent for my black horse. Saturday, bad weather; but made a little excursion on horseback, got roots of Arum quinatum, which, by the way, often has the lateral leaflets not at all incised, and then (in fruit) looks just like A. Virginicum. Buckley is often inquired after here, and seems to have been quite a favorite. He might have enlivened his journal had he informed us therein that he visited both Black and Bald Mountains with a merry company of ladies, and camped out on the summit! But the sly fellow kept all this to himself.
I begin to be in a hurry; but have yet much to do, and find it rather lonely. Monday and Tuesday I intend to devote to Hickory-Nut Gap, twenty-eight miles and back. Then visit Black, if I meddle with this mountain at all. Then, taking final leave of Asheville, go into the mountains near the head of French Broad, take up my quarters with a well-known hunter, try to reach Pilot and other high mountains which Buckley failed in reaching, and which have never been visited by a botanist, unless by Rugel;[134] thence to Table Rock, South Carolina, and by a roundabout way to Franklin, Macon County, Tolula Falls, and Clarksville, Georgia, where I shall try to sell out my horses and wagon, and take stage for Athens, where I am in the way to come by steam all the way to Princeton, via Augusta and Charleston, which bid fair to be healthy enough to warrant my passing through them without rashness.
It will be the 20th October ere I can hope to take you by the hand. Truly welcome are the newspapers you have kindly sent; but I hope for more by the next mail, for I have none later than the middle of September.
I never have been so hurried, and had so little time to write, but shall have the more to tell when I reach you, if it please Providence. Excuse chirography also, for pen and ink are wretched and my hands sore.
Aster Curtisii abounds and is very showy. A. Elliottii takes here the place of A. puniceus. I have found A. mirabilis.
Love to all, most warmly. Don’t fail to mention me to dear Herbert.
Monday morning.--Off for Hickory-Nut Gap, where the scenery is said to be very grand, and the botanizing good. I am to get there Asplenium pinnatifidum, Stuartia pentagyna, and Parnassia asarifolia. Hard work, yet pleasant with a companion. I wish you could be with me.
Very pleasant Sunday service in the Presbyterian church here.
TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.
CAMBRIDGE, November 4, 1843.
I have been absent in the mountains of Virginia and Carolina--after live plants--from 11th August to yesterday; which will be my excuse for not replying to your letter of September 15th. I hope in the mean time you have found some way to send the roots you proposed. There are now connected express lines all the way through. L. & P. Franciscus & Company, No. 90 North Main St., St. Louis, are the agents of Brown & Company Express, Philadelphia; this connects with Harnden’s Express to Boston, the speediest and cheapest method of sending when the package or box is not large, and speed is desirable....
Gaura Lindheimeri is a very fine plant, and flowered fully three months in our Garden. I am having a drawing--hoping to publish it sometime. I want more seeds of Œnothera rhombipetala. Ours flowered while I was away, and was killed by the frost, so that I secured no drawing. Send me all the seeds you can.
Inquire about the express to the East. We must somehow have the means of a more speedy and regular communication of parcels.
I found what I believe is your Lepidanche adpressa at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. Also some others in the mountains, which, with a few other plants, I will send to you by express soon....
You know I am obliged now to prepare for a terrible course of public lectures, to commence in February, so that I cannot work at the “Flora” until spring. But I will find time to study and revise any sets of Lindheimer’s, Geyer’s, and Lüder’s plants you send....
As to my paper on Ceratophyllaceæ, I have long since wished it unpublished, as it contains mistaken views. So I do not care to distribute it.
February 2, 1844.
I have saved Gaura Lindheimeri by cuttings put in pots last autumn. We shall have it in flower early in the spring, and then shall exhibit it at the Horticultural Society’s rooms in Boston.
TO HIS FATHER.
CAMBRIDGE, November 18, 1843.
MY DEAR FATHER,--The return of my birthday brings to mind, among other shortcomings, that I have neglected to write home since my return. I have been very busy, of course, since the 3d of the month, when I reached Cambridge, in answering the heap of letters that had accumulated, and in other business. And I have but just found time to commence the preparation of my course of lectures before the Lowell Institute, which is to commence on the 27th of February, and which will give me plenty of labor and anxiety until they are over....
I have laid in a good stock of health and strength for the labors of the winter--which I am like to need, for I have a great deal to do. Another year, if our lives are spared, I trust you will make me a visit here. I have just given notice that I shall wish to take possession of the Botanic Garden house (now rented to one of the professors) next autumn, where, if I can get a room or two furnished, I shall have a place to entertain you. Affectionate regards to mother and all the family.
TO JOHN TORREY.
CAMBRIDGE, February 17.
My time of trial draws near. A week from Tuesday I begin. There has been a pretty brisk application for tickets. But I have yet very much to do. My two last lectures are not even blocked out upon paper. Many pictures are yet to be made, and I shall have a busy time indeed until they are all delivered. The end will be deliverance indeed. Yet strange as it may seem, my spirits are rather on the rise; though I will not answer for them for ten days longer.
I have written an introductory which, with a few more touches, I shall be satisfied with. And some of my lectures which have least illustrations--such as that on food and nutrition--are pretty carefully written out. I have contrived a diagram illustrating the cycle of relations of three kingdoms, which I think is capital (as it is quite original), and which I long to show you. If I had three mouths more, I am convinced I could put my materials into the form of a capital course of lectures.
Zuccarini wrote me a year ago--when he sent the Japanese plants that we looked over together--that the Japanese species utterly confounded the difference between Rhododendron and Azalea; decandrous species having deciduous leaves, etc. If they must come together (and De Candolle seems doubtful) it would be a pity you did not follow that plan, as you early adopted it.
Then after all, in such case, are the Azaleas, as they will ever be called in cultivation, to make the section Azalea, or is A. procumbens to take that name?...
I wish you could see my Lowell anatomical illustrations. The pity is, that I shall hardly use them in this course, now that my introductory lecture only brings me down to them. (but I shall have them spread to look at), and I can only give to the subject about twenty minutes of my second lecture.
But it is very late indeed. Adieu.
Yours cordially, A. GRAY.
March 1, 1844.
Well, you have heard what I had to say about my introductory lecture. I was satisfied. I said plainly what I intended to say and delivered it not very well indeed, but well enough to satisfy me that I could do well with practice. This evening I have made a second trial, and a more trying one by far. I have a cold and am a little hoarse, which was a good thing, for as to voice I filled the house. As I was full of illustrations, quite as much as would cover the whole side of a barn, I determined to try the experiment of lecturing by the general guidance of my notes only (which indeed were but partly written out). So with the long pole in hand to point at the pictures I set at work, and talked away for an hour and ten minutes.
I felt like a person who can hardly swim, thrown into the river, fairly in for it, and had to kick and strike to keep my head above water. The results are these. I was by no means satisfied, and thought I had made almost a failure. I left out many important points, I repeated myself a little now and then, and,--the usual result of extemporizing,--I did not get through, but was obliged to break off in the midst of the best of it. But, in spite of some difficulties of expression, and bad sentences, the whole was probably more spirited in appearance than if I had followed my notes. And the audience generally seemed more moved by it than by the first.
I consider it thus far successful; that under unfavorable circumstances, for I had no time to look over my notes beforehand, I made a desperate lunge, and yet avoided a real failure. It will place me so much at ease that I can hereafter, with or without notes, look fairly at my audience without wincing. So I shall do better hereafter....
I send you my notes (on Vacciniums) as far as written before I left for the South last summer; and with all Boott’s memoranda as material. It would be crazy for me now to attempt to make any memoranda, or even to make the corrections that the new data require. Conclusions formed in hurly-burly are good for nothing; and I cannot, and must not, think of anything but my task. The two last of my lectures are not even arranged yet.
TO J. D. HOOKER.
CAMBRIDGE, 1st March, 1844.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I was very much gratified at receiving your kind letter of January 16; and I was quite startled at the lapse of time, I assure you, when you reminded me that five years had elapsed since we were running about the streets of London together. Since that time you have seen the world, indeed, or some very out-of-the-way parts of it; and you now stand in a perfectly unrivaled position as a botanist, as to advantages, etc., with the finest collections and libraries of the world within your reach; and if you do not accomplish something worth the while, you ought not to bear the name of Hooker.
I thank you most cordially for all the news you kindly give me respecting the family, and wish to return my best thanks for being remembered to one and all. Your good old grandfather holds out so well that really I sometimes think I may yet take him again by the hand; for I long to make another visit to England. Perhaps I may in two or three years. But I hope ere that to see you here, where you may depend upon a most hearty reception; and the Greenes (who send remembrances) join me strenuously in begging you will make us a visit. After Sir William and Lady Hooker (seniores priores), whom we cannot expect to see under present circumstances, there is nobody in England I could so much wish to see as yourself.
Had I time, I should fill this sheet with gossip about my occupations, plans, and prospects. Of these hereafter, for I hope our correspondence will not end here. But I am now exceedingly pressed for time, having just commenced my course of public lectures in Boston on physiological botany. Indeed I have the second lecture to give this evening, and much preparation yet to make for it. But I must tell you that in August next I am to take possession of the house which belongs to our little Botanic Garden,--a quiet pleasant place, where I am to set up a bachelor establishment, have room enough for my herbarium, which I shall arrange à la Hooker, and a bed and a plate for a friend. So, if you wish to take an autumnal excursion, step on board the steamer and so drop in upon me some morning, where you may depend upon--in a humble way--as cordial a reception as I once received in Scotland.
Sullivant, who is a good, spirited fellow, is delighted at the thought of receiving a set of your cryptogamic collections. As to your generous proposal to send another to some public collection in this country, we will see. I will write something about it in due time.
TO JOHN TORREY.
CAMBRIDGE, 25th March, [1844].
I think I should be an unhappy, discontented, unthankful person not to be gratified with the success of my lectures. But it is not likely to turn my head. Everything proceeds quietly and soberly. I purposely directed no tickets to be sent to a paper that often reports lectures, as I did not wish it done. There has not been a line in the papers about the matter, except the very considerate notice about the beginning, which I sent you. My last week’s lectures are called much the best. The first, on the anatomy and physiology of leaves, and exhalation and its consequences, occupied an hour and twenty minutes. My last, on food of plants, vegetable digestion, and the relations of plants to mineral and animal kingdoms,--in which I did my very best, and which required and secured the most intense attention on the part of the audience for a hundred minutes,--was received with an intelligent enthusiasm which did the audience credit. For it would be mere affectation for me to pretend not to know--as I well do--that it is one of the best scientific lectures that have ever been delivered in Boston. I have none left to compare with it. I have only four more to give, during which I dare say the interest will fall off; which will not disappoint or mortify me. From your truly kind remarks and warnings I suppose you look upon my success in this undertaking as extremely hazardous to my best interests. Now this duty came to me unsolicited and unexpected. I accepted it because I thought it was my duty to do so. Then I was of course bound to make every consistent effort to insure success. While viewing it at a distance, I felt much anxiety. But before I commenced, this entirely disappeared, and I have gone on just as coolly as you might do with your chemical course. I am thankful that (owing chiefly to the nature and novelty of the subject) I have done my work creditably. The little éclat which attends it, I am not so foolish as to care anything for, pro or con. It is entirely ephemeral. It may gratify my friends; but it does me no good, and I trust no harm. The general result may benefit the science of this part of the country. It will probably tend to advance my interests, as I certainly wish it may, the object of my ambition being high and honorable, as well as moderate....
Though I feel that I often--always--fail to do my whole duty, yet I do not feel, nor believe, that a perfectly consistent Christian course would expose me to persecution; nor that obloquy is a test of Christian character. These are to be borne like other evils, when they are incurred in the course of one’s duty; but surely they are not to be sought, nor viewed as a test. Under the circumstances under which we are placed, would our unexpectedly meeting with obloquy be any test to us that we were doing right? Would it not lead us to suspect we had been at least unwise? Such men as Payson or Edwards, though they may often have been pitied, I suspect, were never persecuted. But, while I think you take a one-sided view and assume, an unscriptural test, in your own case, I thank you most sincerely for your kind admonition to me, and will try to profit by it. My sheet is fairly full.
I need not say how delighted I should be to see you here; but you must not come till the spring has fairly commenced, at least. The weather is excessively unpleasant, the roads almost impassable; it snows every three or four days, and not a speck of green is yet to be seen. A month later it will be comfortable here. I fear I shall not have a place to receive you before autumn, as a house is yet to be built for Dr. Walker. But I should still like to have a visit from you in the course of the summer.
* * * * *
Dr. Gray was always deeply interested in the religious thought of the day; reticent in regard to his own religious feelings and sensitive about any exhibition of them, he was ready at any time to discuss problems of theology and ecclesiasticism. His temper was naturally conservative, and he held by the habits of thought which had been early formed; but he was open to conviction, and by the process of his own thought broke through narrow bounds and rejoiced in all true progress in religion, both for himself and others. In the matter of scriptural authority, for example, he was in accord with Soame Jenyns, taking the ground quoted here:
“The Scriptures,” says that writer, in his “Internal Evidences of Christianity,” “are not revelations from God, but the history of them. The revelations themselves are derived from God, but the history of them is the production of man. If the records of this revelation are supposed to be the revelation itself, the least defect discovered in them must be fatal to the whole. What has led many to overlook this distinction is that common phrase that the Scriptures are the Word of God; and in one sense they certainly are; that is, they are the sacred repository of all the revelations, dispensations, promises, and precepts which God has vouchsafed to communicate to mankind; but by this expression we are not to understand that every part of this voluminous collection of historical, poetical, prophetical, theological, and moral writing which we call the Bible was dictated by the immediate influence of Divine inspiration.”
He held this ground strongly when the general view of the Bible was narrower than of late years. As the years went on he grew broader and sweeter, feeling wider sympathy with all true, devout religious belief.
He was a constant church-goer, everywhere. When traveling he always made Sunday a resting-day if possible, and would go quietly off in the morning to find some place of service, in English if he could. He enjoyed the Episcopal service, though early habit and training had made him a Presbyterian; but, as he wrote in an early letter, “In fact I have no more fondness for high Calvinistic theology than for German neology.... But I have no penchant for melancholy, sober as I sometimes look, but turn always, like the leaves, my face to the sun.”
He was a teacher in Sunday-schools in New York (the lady with whom he boarded has still a lively remembrance of his enthusiastic study of German that he might teach his class of German boys better), and also in his early years of Cambridge life, until the heavy load of work he was carrying made the Sunday more imperative as a day of rest. It was his rule to rest on Sunday. Rest for him was change of intellectual occupation, and he read all of the day he was not out at church; more especially on the philosophical questions, whether general or scientific, which next to botany were his chief interest. Books on these subjects were the few he bought outside of works on botany; as he said, he could only afford botanical books and had no money or room for general literature. He read the leading magazines, and occasionally biographies and travels, and if he had friends staying with him, Sunday was the day for talk and discussion. A friend writes such a lively reminiscence of one of these Sunday discussions, on a stormy winter day which shut all in the house, that it seems worth giving as a vivid description of him.
“Dr. Gray is more associated with the study and the room next it, but I recall him there (in the parlor) also, especially in the visit of which you wrote, made when Mr. John Carey was with you. He and the doctor held one Sunday a long discussion on the Ten Commandments as binding upon Christians. Mr. Carey argued that their only claim upon our obedience consisted in their having been re-ordained (indorsed as it were) by the church,--whether that meant the Holy Catholic or simply the Anglican Church was not decided, as I remember. Dr. Gray combated this extreme church view warmly and cleverly. Both were pugnacious amiably, as in their botanical fights. Both were excited, and the doctor showed his excitement in his characteristically self-forgetful way, by moving or jumping nervously about the room, sitting on the floor, lying down flat, but laughing and sending sparks out of his eyes, and plying his arguments and making his witty thrusts all the while. I enjoyed it very much, scarcely observing the odd positions any more than the doctor did. I had seen him so conduct himself before.”
It may be added to this that Dr. Gray was noticeable throughout his life for his alertness. In the street he was usually on a half run, for he never allowed himself quite time enough to reach his destination leisurely. When traveling by coach and climbing a hill he would sometimes alarm his fellow-travellers by suddenly disappearing through a window in his eagerness to secure some plant he had spied; his haste would not suffer him to open a door. As his motions were quick, so that he seemed always ready for a spring, so he found instant relaxation by throwing himself flat on the floor when tired, to rest, like a child.
His physical characteristics expressed something of his mental qualities. He was quick and impetuous in temper, but his excitement was short-lived, and his prevailing spirit was one of apparently inexhaustible good-nature. He was the cheeriest of household companions; rarely was he depressed, only indeed when greatly fagged with some tremendous pressure of work or some worrying trouble difficult to settle; he was exceedingly hopeful, and always carried with him a happy assurance that everything was going on well in his absence; withal, he was fearless in all adventure, never willing to allow there had been any danger when it had passed! He was fond of arguing, but no partisan, so that however earnest and dogmatic be might seem, the moment the discussion was over there was no trace of bitterness or vexation left. He was a clear and close reasoner himself, and thus impatient of defective reasoning or a confused statement in others. He was quick, too, in turning his opponents’ weapons against them; sometimes he would escape from a dilemma in a merry, plausible form, but in serious argument he always insisted upon downright sincerity.
TO W. J. HOOKER.
April 1, 1844.
I finish my course of Lowell lectures this week, which have succeeded beyond my most sanguine expectations. I have restricted myself to physiological botany only,--taken up only great leading views,--used very large paintings for illustrations, six to eight feet high, which the great size of the room required, and then have given to sound scientific views a general popular interest.
TO JOHN TORREY.
CAMBRIDGE, May 24, 1844.
I have been using Dr. Wyman’s microscope of late, and it works well. By the way, I have been studying fertilization a little, and have got out pollen-tubes of great length; have followed them down the style, have seen them in the cavity of the ovary, and close to the orifice of the ovule.
My first views were in Asarum Canadense and A. arifolium, where I can very well see the pollen-tubes with even my three-line doublet! I have seen them finely in Menyanthes; and in the ovary in Chelidonium!
I am lecturing[135] in a popular and general way entirely on physiological botany, and offering no encouragement to any to pursue systematic botany this year. My great point is to make physiological botany appear as it should be,--the principal branch in general education. Next year I hope to take up the other branch.
I am using the Lowell illustrations (though too large for my room), and am having no additional ones made for the college. For simple things I depend much upon the blackboard. I have given two lectures on the longevity of trees, and have a third yet to give, or at least half of another....
The plants from the mountains have some done well, others poorly. Buckleyas had a hard time of it. Many are dead; none I think will flower this season, as they only put out from the root. Diphylleia, Saxifraga Careyana, a new one like it, also S. erosa, etc., are now in flower. Astilbe is in bud, also Vaccinium ursinum. One Carex Fraseri flowered. Hamiltonia only starts from the root.
* * * * *
In 1844, finding he needed more room for his rapidly increasing herbarium, Dr. Gray applied for the use of the Botanic Garden house, which since the death of Dr. Peck had been occupied for a while as a boarding-house, and later by Dr. and Mrs. Walker. He moved into it in September, and there remained until the end of his life. He had a great attachment for the house, as the only one in which he had resided for any length of time; and it saw the gradual growth of his herbarium, needing before many years the addition of a wing to give more room, until, having overrun all possible places for its accommodation, it was removed in 1864 into the fireproof building which now holds it.
The garden was laid out by Dr. Peck in 1808, and the house built for him was finished in 1810. Mr. Nuttall, the botanist and ornithologist, who boarded in it while giving instruction in botany, left some curious traces behind him. He was very shy of intercourse with his fellows, and having for his study the southeast room, and the one above for his bedroom, put in a trap-door in the floor of an upper connecting closet, and so by a ladder could pass between his rooms without the chance of being met in the passage or on the stairs. A flap hinged and buttoned in the door between the lower closet and the kitchen allowed his meals to be set in on a tray without the chance of his being seen. A window he cut down into an outer door, and with a small gate in the board fence surrounding the garden, of which he alone had the key, he could pass in and out safe from encountering any human being.
The garden, though small, was planned with much skill, and when Dr. Gray first lived on the place was much more filled up in the centre with trees and shrubs, so that since one was unable to see from one path to another, it seemed much larger than when more open. Dr. Peck, who had visited Europe and learned much of botanical gardens there, when complimented on his success in laying it out, said that “he felt he had been at work on a pocket-handkerchief!” Dr. Gray, as his letters show, fell earnestly at work to restock the garden, and from his various journeys, his correspondents, and the many seeds and roots which were coming in from the Western explorations soon made it a valuable spot for exchange. It is interesting to note how many plants, now the common stock of all gardens, were first grown and flowered here. One bed for many years always went by the familiar name of “Texas,” as being the place where the new Texan seeds were grown. The fund for endowment was very small, and added greatly to the care of its oversight, because of the effort to keep within the income. For two years after Dr. Gray was living in the Garden house, he gave up two bed-rooms to the greenhouse plants, and so saved the Garden the expense of fuel for that period! One of his first deeds was to abolish the fee and make admission to the Garden free. It was the first--and remained for more than sixty years the only--public botanic garden in the country.
TO JOHN TORREY.
Tuesday evening, October 1, 1844.
I am about half fixed at the Garden, and shall probably sleep there to-morrow night. Were it not that my woman-kind has disappointed me, we should dine there to-morrow....
Dr. Wyman[136] wishes much to accompany Frémont if he goes on another journey, entirely at his own expense, if need be. As his object is entirely zoölogy, he will not interfere with Frémont’s botanical plans, while the results would redound to Frémont’s advantage. He is a most amiable, quiet, and truly gentlemanly fellow, retiring to a fault, but full of nerve, and surely is to be the great man of this country in the highest branches of zoölogy and comparative anatomy. I therefore very strenuously solicit your influence at court in his behalf.
I am glad that Frémont takes so much personal interest in his botanical collections. He will do all the more. I should like to see his plants, especially the Compositæ and Rosaceæ. As to Coniferæ he should have the Taxodium sempervirens, so imperfectly known, and probably a new genus. Look quick at it, for it is probably in Coulter’s collection which Harvey is working at....
Cordially yours, A. GRAY.
February 12, 1845.
My first lecture is to-day finished, and has this evening been read to Mr. Albro.[137] Half of it is devoted to a serving up of “Vestiges of Creation” (which Boott says is written by Sir Richard Vivian), showing that the objectionable conclusions rest upon gratuitous and unwarranted inferences from established or probable facts. Peirce is examining Mulder,[138] that we may fairly get at his point of view. His conclusions as to equivocal generation are non-constat from his own premises. On the whole series of subjects Peirce--who is much pleased with the way I have put the case in my introductory--and myself think of concocting a joint article, though my time will prevent me from working out some of the subsidiary points just now.
I assure you I am quite well and hearty, just in capital working mood. As to the lectures, I must work hard all the way through, but do not feel any misgivings. My house is hot enough, I assure you; no trouble on that score. As to spontaneous generation, the experiment of Schultz[139] is nearly or quite a test, and goes against it. Love to all.
Ever yours, A. GRAY.
The next letter contains the first allusion to Isaac Sprague, so long associated with Dr. Gray as illustrator of his works. Isaac Sprague was born in Hingham in 1811. He early showed a faculty for observation, and a gift for painting birds and flowers from nature. His talent was discovered, and he was invited by Audubon in 1843 to join his expedition to Missouri, and to assist in making drawings and sketches. President, then Professor, Felton, having met him in Hingham, and knowing Dr. Gray was looking for some one for his scientific drawings, recommended Mr. Sprague, and he began with the illustrations for the Lowell lectures and the new edition of the “Botanical Text-Book.” Dr. Gray was delighted with his gift for beauty, his accuracy, his quick appreciation of structure and his skill in making dissections. Mr. Sprague was from that time the chief, and mostly only, illustrator for his books, both educational and purely scientific.
Dr. Gray is said to have stated that Mr. Sprague had but one rival,--Riocreux; and he considered that draughtsman’s classical drawings inferior to Mr. Sprague’s.
TO JOHN TORREY.
CAMBRIDGE, March 8, [1845?]
... I finish Lichens this afternoon; and have next two lectures on Fungi and spontaneous generation to give. I interweave a good deal of matter, such as, on Ferns, the part they played in the early times of the world, à la Brongniart. Mosses, filling up lakes and pools; Sphagnum, Peat. Lichens, first agents in clothing rocks with soil. I have noble illustrations of rust in wheat, ergot, etc., and Sprague is now hard at work on smut, à la Bauer.
You remember the letter I sent you from Prestele of “Ebenezer, near Buffalo,” and which you still hold. Well, he has sent me for inspection a most superb set of drawings, both of cultivated and of some native plants, exceedingly well done. Also specimens of his work in cutting on stone, which he does admirably. He did the work in Bischoff’s “Terminology,” which perhaps you remember, two quarto volumes. What a pity he did not have the State-Flora plates to execute!
If Dr. Beck and yourself go on with your plan, he is your man to engrave the plates on stone. Our Illicium is now in full flower; but I cannot spare Sprague a moment to draw it yet; unless, indeed, it is quite certain you will want it this year, when I would try. He must work hard for me two weeks longer....
My cutting up of “Vestiges of Creation” was a fine blow, and told. Peirce, who you know was rather inclined to favor Rogers a while ago, is now sound and strong. We think of sending a critical analysis of the first part of Mulder, as our joint work (if he finds time to put in form the physiological deductions I give him), to the meeting of geologists and naturalists at New Haven next month.
Mulder is very ingenious; but we can blow up the whole line of his arguments, and show that it all amounts to nothing; that he has not in this advanced our knowledge a particle; and that his generalizations are unsound. Why did you not have a part of my article reprinted in New York? That would be the best reply to all his stuff.
The printing of my book will be through next week.
March 30.
I am now half through, and have got almost done with Fungi. The audience take so much to the “Cryptogamic matters,” especially the afternoon audience, which is as a whole the most intelligent and refined, that I let them run on, and they will occupy the whole course, except three lectures. I gave one lecture, generally thought nearly the best, on the large Fungi, mushrooms, truffles, morels, puff-balls, with some good general matters. To-day I have taken the small ones, moulds, mildews, rust, and smut in wheat, with superb illustrations. Ergot is still left over, along with the diseases in potatoes, the plant of fermentation, the Botrytis that kills silk-worms, with some recapitulatory matters on spontaneous generation, which must be cooked up for Friday. Then comes Algæ; the large proper ones (Lecture 8), of which a fine series of illustrations is now nearly done.
Lecture 9. Then the low, minute forms and Confervæ come, and gory dew, red snow, superbly illustrated, ending with diatoms, transitions to corallines through sponge, etc., and the locomotive spores of Confervæ, Zoösporæ.
Lecture 10. Whole subject of spontaneous movements and sensibility in flowering plants, the life of plants, etc. (treated in a somewhat original way), and the real differences between plants and animals.
Lecture 11. The principles of classification. Individuals, species, their permanence, genera, orders, etc.
Lecture 12. Historical development. The Linnæan system, the natural. This ends so as to give me a fine place to begin at next year....
I shall soon be able to spare Sprague to draw the Illicium, if it still holds on. But I cannot spare him just yet. He has still to copy the red-snow bank from Ross, eighteen feet long!--finish two pieces of algæ, etc., etc.
TO A. DE CANDOLLE.
April 5, 1845.
I anxiously wait for the notices of the life and writings of your lamented father, which you so kindly offer. I agree with you that that of Daubeny[140] gives the best view of the philosophy of his science; and yet there are points of view that he has not touched upon. You, of course, know better than any one else what were your father’s philosophical views in natural history, his modes of thinking and working; and if, when you send me the above-mentioned documents, you would also feel at liberty to place such confidence in me as to give me your own views and suggestions upon the subject, and especially upon the points that other writers appear to have overlooked, I should be able to produce, in the “North American Review,” a much more important article and a worthier tribute to the memory of one so revered on this side of the Atlantic as well as in Europe. May I hope you will favor me in this respect?
Many thanks for the botanical news. I long to be delivered from the pressure of the engagements that have consumed so much of my time for the last year or two, and finish the “Flora of North America.”
I remain, ever, my dear friend, faithfully yours,
A. GRAY.
TO JOHN TORREY.
August, 1845.
The new post-office law is an excellent thing, as it enables us to exchange our missives frequently, to send little pieces of news, and ask and answer questions without waiting for time and matter to fill up a formal letter.
I must tell you a little change made in my sanctum here. You are to imagine me writing at a sort of bureau-escritoire (standing under Robert Brown’s picture), which I fortunately picked up the other day for $10. It is of old dark wood a century old, and contains below four drawers, while the upper part, which opens into a fine writing-table, has eight pigeon-holes, six drawers, and a little special lock-up with several drawers and pigeon-holes more. You know I like any quantity of these stowaway places. I have sent upstairs the table which stood in its place, and brought down the round one, so that I have more room than before.
TO W. J. HOOKER.
October 14, 1845.
Your excellent father lived to a truly patriarchal age. Mine, who has been in failing health for some time, I learn to-day is suddenly and extremely sick, and I set out for my birthplace immediately, in hopes yet to see him once more.
* * * * *
His father died October 13, before he reached Sauquoit. He had made his son a visit in Cambridge after he was established at the Garden house, more especially to consult a physician for his failing health.
TO JOHN TORREY.
CAMBRIDGE, November 15, 1845.
My visit to Oakes[141] I was chiefly to this intent. You know that I have been waiting and waiting for Oakes to give, not his New England “Flora” (which I fear he will always leave unfinished), but a predromus of it, for my use and for New England. The consequence of waiting is that Wood[142] is just taking the market, against my “Botanical Text-Book,” mostly by means of his “Flora.” Letters from Hitchcock--and elsewhere--all point to the probability that they will have to use his book (of which, by the way, he is preparing a second edition, which he cannot but improve), and ask me to prevent it by appending a brief description of New England or Northern plants to my “Botanical Text-Book.” A plan has occurred to me by which this might be done, were it not that I will not tread on the heels of anything that Oakes (who has devoted a life of labor to this end) will actually do.
As something must be done at once, I have proposed to Oakes to make myself the necessary conspectuses of orders, analyses, etc.; to join the proposed thing on, or to dove-tail it into, the “Text-Book;” and also to furnish the generic characters, and he is to write the specific characters and all that for New England plants. I give him as limit 250 pages brevier type, 12mo (say 300), and insist upon having the greater part of the copy on the 1st March, and that it shall be published on the 1st April. That I may cover the ground of Wood, and introduce it into New York, I propose, if you think it right and proper, to add the characters of the (about 150) New York plants not found in New England, distinguishing that by a †.
Oakes promises to do it. But our understanding is explicit that if he cannot get through with it in time, he is soon to let me know, and to furnish me with New England matters, when I am to do, not exactly this, but a more compendious manual of the botany of New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, that is, the Northern States proper. It will be imperfect and hasty, but it will prevent Wood from fixing himself so that he cannot be driven out.
I propose to have a sufficient number of copies of this (in whatever form it may appear) bound up with the “Botanical Text-Book” to meet the demands of the one-book system in New England and New York, and to afford it at a price reduced to a minimum, so that nothing is to be made out of it, at least out of the first edition.
How does this all strike you? I am convinced that something must be done, and I will see if we can’t have a very popular, and at the same time a pretty good book.
George[143] sends his warm regards.
21st November, 1845.
I have driven Oakes so absolutely into a corner that I think he will work for once. The man’s preparations and materials are enormous! and for his sake I hope he will. If he does not, I shall know in time,--that is, as soon as I can use the knowledge,--and then the plan may take such form as may be deemed best. I should then wish to make it more absolutely a supplement of “Botanical Text-Book;” but only for the proper North. In the way in which it would then be done, with Persoonish[144] compactness and brevity, I doubt if you would care to engage in it. As soon as we can get out the proper Botany of the United States, I should wish it to supersede this to a great extent. In my hands, I would sell it so cheaply as to make very little, except as it promotes the sale of the “Botanical Text-Book.” I would sell the “Text-Book” with it for $2, or less even. The great object is to keep the ground clear by running an uncompromising opposition against the threatening interlopers.
My lectures are to commence January 13th.
TO J. D. HOOKER.
CAMBRIDGE, 31st December, 1845.
I was much pleased to receive your pleasant letter of the 29th October last, and I read with interest the account of the debate on the occasion of the election by the Edinburgh Town Council. Such defeats can do you no harm. I suppose you are now going on with the “Flora Antarctica.” I need not say that I should be very glad to see the Antarctic plants of the Wilkes Expedition in your hands. The botanist who accompanied the expedition is no doubt perfectly incompetent to the task, so greatly so that probably he has but a remote idea how incompetent he is. I have not seen him nor the plants. Certainly I would not touch them (any but the Oregon and Californian) if they were offered to me, which they are not likely to be. I consider myself totally incompetent to do such a work without making it a special study for some years, and going abroad to study the collections accumulated in Europe. Of course if they are worked up at all in this country, they will be done disgracefully. I publicly expressed my opinion on the subject in “Silliman’s Journal.” But I have long been convinced that nothing can be done. The whole business has been in the hands till now of Senator----, the most obstinate, wrong-headed, narrow-minded, impracticable ignoramus that could well be found.... If to this you add an utter ignorance of those principles of comity and the spirit of interchange that prevail among naturalists, and a total want of comprehension of what is to be done in the scientific works in question, and you will see that nothing is to be expected from such sources. They have thrown every obstacle they could in the way of their naturalists--Dana and Pickering, for instance--so much so that Pickering, though a patient man, once threw up his position in disgust, I have heard, but, by some concessions made to him, was finally persuaded to retain it.
Some of the scientific reports will soon be published, Dana on the Corals, etc., which will, I suppose, be very creditable to him. When any of the volumes appear I am somewhat inclined to call public attention to some of this gross mismanagement and incompetency in these wrong-headed managers, in a review. I thank you very much for all the botanical news you give, and hope you will still favor me now and then with other such epistles.
I have never worked so hard as for the last four years, nor accomplished so much. Still it will not show for much in your eyes, and I receive many an exhortation like yours to go on with the “Flora.” But a world of work that could only be done by myself, the pressure of the duties of my new position, and the necessity of taking, indeed of creating, and maintaining a stand that should make my department felt and appreciated, has indeed sadly interrupted the work which I am of all others most desirous to complete. I have already a great deal of matter in a state of forwardness, and another year (Deo favente) will, I trust, give you a better account of me. My last course of public lectures in Boston commences in a fortnight, and will be over towards the close of February. You will admit that there is some temptation to a person who has so many uses for money, when I tell you that I received twelve hundred dollars for the delivery of twelve lectures, and that there are strong reasons beyond what the institution that employs me may justly demand, that I should do my best. This, however, will soon be over, and the “Flora” shall be pushed with vigor.... I greatly long to revisit England and to see you all once more. Nothing would delight me more; and there is a world of work I want to do in the collections of England and the Continent. Indeed you may look to see me one of these days, for I cannot long be satisfied or quiet without such a visit; though I shall hardly dare to show my face till the “Flora” is finished. How glad I shall be to see you in your quarters at Kew, and renew my acquaintance with all the family, of whom I retain so many pleasant memories. With kind regards to all, believe me,
Ever your affectionate friend, A. GRAY.
TO JOHN TORREY.
CAMBRIDGE, January 26, 1846.
Your favor of the 22d I found this evening on my return from my afternoon’s lecture. I am very tired and cannot write much this evening. Four of my lectures[145] are off. You will be glad to know that they have gone off very well--the three first admirably; indeed I was surprised myself at the fluency, ease, and “enlargement” which was given me. The fourth, both last evening and this afternoon, was poorer--interesting details, but scrappy, and less comfort in speaking. Splendid illustrations up though.... The pictures were worth something, if the lecture was not. I shall spur myself up hard for those four to come, which are fully illustrated, in fact a complete _embarras de richesses_. Then come the four geographical lectures, which if Sprague gets the illustrations ready will be very interesting, I think. I must work them off well, for at least two of our seven members of corporation are constant hearers.
... There is a formidable amount of work of various sorts that should be accomplished (Deo favente) before the July vacation.... The contemplated expedition is a land one, from Lake Superior by North Pass to upper Oregon, down to Lewis River; up that, and then over to the Gila River in California. I know of no botanist to go. Can you find one? Sprague cannot be spared, and will not leave his wife and family for so long.
... Some of our Congressmen must feel a little ashamed that England is so cool and quiet in spite of all their bluster. Capital for peace that the Peel ministry is still in. We owe much gratitude to the new Lord Grey....
TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.
CAMBRIDGE, April 8, 1846.
What is Lindheimer about? Why is not his last year’s collection yet with you? We have just got things going, and we can sell fifty sets right off of his further collections, and he can go on and realize a handsome sum of money, if he will only work now! And he will connect his name forever with the Texan Flora!
I am at the “Flora” again and hope to do great things this year,--shall work hard and constantly.
Besides, by the aid of my young and excellent artist Sprague’s drawings, and Prestele to engrave cheaply and neatly on stone, I am going to commence a Genera Illustrata of the United States, like T. Nees von Esenbeck’s “Genera Germanica Iconibus Illustrata.”--the plates to be equally good, and quite cheap too. The first volume, one hundred plates, going on regularly from Ranunculaceæ, will be preparing this summer, and will be out in the fall....
May 30.
Have done something at the “Flora;” shall do much work this season after July 4th, when college duties are over. Drawings for “Genera” are getting on well.
One word now on another point. We must have a collector for plants living and dry to go to Santa Fé, with the Government Expedition. If I were not so tied up, I would go myself. Have you not some good fellow you can send? We could probably get him attached somehow so as to have the protection of the army, and if need be I could raise here two hundred dollars as an outfit. He could make it worth the while. He could collect sixty sets of five hundred plants (besides seeds and Cacti) very soon, which, named by us, would go off at once at ten dollars per hundred. Somebody must go into this unexplored field! Let me know if you think anything can be done, and I will set to work. The great thing is a proper man.
July 15.
I duly received your favor of June 25th; am delighted that you found a man to send to Santa Fé. I approve your mode of carrying out the plan, and will not be slow to aid in it. I wrote at once to Sullivant, telling him to forward fifty dollars for Fendler,[146]--to take his pay in Mosses and Hepaticæ, and to give instructions about collecting these, his great favorites. Before this reaches you, I am sure you will hear from him. He is a capital fellow, and Fendler must be taught to collect Mosses for him.
Then came your letter of July 3d. All right. I immediately wrote to Marcy, the Secretary of War, and to Colonel Abert, the head of the Topographical Engineer Corps; asked for protection and transportation; told the secretary to send anything he might be disposed to do to you at St. Louis. I then inclosed your letter to Mr. Lowell, and have just received it back again, with his letter, which I inclose to you! Is it not handsome?... Now Fendler has money enough to begin with. As soon as he is in the field, and shown by his first collections that he is deserving, I can get as much more money advanced for him, from other parties. If he only makes as good and handsome specimens as Lindheimer, all will be well. His collections should commence when he crosses the Arkansas; his first envoi should be the plants between that and Santa Fé, and be sent this fall, with seeds, cacti, and bulbs, the former of every kind he can get. These must be confined to yourself, Mr. Lowell, and me, till we see what we get by raising them. Other live plants he had better not attempt now.
His next collection must be at and around Santa Fé. But instruct him to get into high mountains, or as high as he can find, whenever he can. The mountains to the north of Santa Fé often rise to the snowline, and are perfectly full of new things. But you can best judge what instructions to give him. We can sell just as many sets of plants as he will make good specimens of. But forty sets is about as many as he ought to make....
It is said that a corps of troops is to be sent up through Texas towards New Spain. Lindheimer ought to go along, and so get high up into the country, where so much is new, and the plants have really “no Latin names.”
October 8th.
By the way, meeting Agassiz last evening, I was pleased to learn that he claimed you as a schoolmate, and spoke of you with lively pleasure. He is a fine, pleasant fellow. We shall take good care of him here.
January 5, 1847.
I am glad so fine a collection is on the way from Lindheimer, and greatly approve his going to the mountains on the Guadaloupe. How high are the mountains? If good, real mountains, and he can get on to them, and into secluded valleys, he will do great things....
We will keep ahead of the Bonn people. By the close of next summer (Deo favente) we may hope to have the botany of Texas pretty well in our hands.
Do you hear from Fendler? Hooker says that region, the mountains especially, is the best ground to explore in North America! There is a high mountain right back of Santa Fé. Fendler must ravish it.
TO JOHN TORREY.
Wednesday, [October, 1846].
A Mr. Baird,[147] of Carlisle, Pa., called on me yesterday, evidently a most keen naturalist (ornithology principally), but a man of more than common grasp. He talked about an evergreen-leaved Vaccinium, which I have no doubt is V. brachycerum, Mx., that I have so long sought in vain!...
13th October, 1846.
I leave Agassiz in New York. He will leave New York Wednesday morning; join me at Princeton, and go on with us to Philadelphia that evening. We shall probably go together to Carlisle, where he has something to do with that capital naturalist, Professor Baird, and I have to get live Vaccinium brachycerum. He will soon return to make ready his lectures here.
Agassiz is an excellent fellow, and I know you will be glad to make his personal acquaintance. I must make my stay, such as it can be, at Princeton, on my return....
9th December, 1846.
Agassiz lectured first last evening; fine audience; he had a cold; was very hoarse, so that he spoke with discomfort to himself, but it went off very well. Though he by no means did himself justice, the audience seemed well pleased, and the persons I spoke with at the time, the most intelligent people, were quite delighted and impressed. He has repeated to-day. I expect to hear him again on Friday....
I have sixteen proofs of “Genera Illustrata.” The engraving is clean and neat, but except a few of the last, they are not done so well as we expect, and do not do justice to the drawings, which, indeed, are almost matchless. Prestele has, in some, altered the arrangement of the analyses on the plate; consequently they must be done over again.
I am clear that Prestele can do what I want, so I have given him further instructions, and have raised his pay to $2.50 each; increasing my own risk thereby. Sprague has discovered some new quiddities about the position of the ovule in Ranunculaceæ. The raphe is dorsal in all of them, with pendulous ovules; also in Nelumbium.
He will go on very slowly; I can’t hurry him. He has not yet taken up Croomia.
You have not told me about Chapman’s queer plant yet!...
Unless Nuttall has arrived, which I do not hear of, it is too late for him till next fall; for his object was to secure three months’ absence out of the present year, and three out of next.[148]
January 24, 1847.
Agassiz has finished his lectures with great eclât--most admirable course--and on Thursday evening last he volunteered an additional one in French, which was fine.
I gave you the explanation you asked for in my last letter, which I still hope you will find. What I then said about the excellent tone of his lectures generally was fully sustained to the last; they have been good lectures on natural theology. The whole spirit was vastly above that of any geological course I ever heard, his refutation of Lamarckian or “Vestiges” views most pointed and repeated. The whole course was planned on a very high ground, and his references to the Creator were so natural and unconstrained as to show that they were never brought in for effect.
The points that I. A. Smith has got hold of were a few words at the close of his lecture on the geographical distribution of animals, in which he applied the views he maintains (which are those of Schouw still further extended) to man.
He thinks that animals and plants were originally created in numbers, occupying considerable area, perhaps almost as large as they now occupy. I should mention that he opposes Lyell and others who maintain that very many of the Tertiary species are the same as those now existing. He believes there is not one such, but that there was an entirely new creation at the commencement of the historic era, which is all we want to harmonize geology with Genesis. Now, as to man he maintains distinctly that they are all one species. But he does not believe that the Negro and Malay races descended from the sons of Noah, but had a distinct origin. This, you will see, is merely an extension of his general view. We should not receive it, rejecting it on other than scientific grounds, of which he does not feel the force as we do.
But so far from bringing this against the Bible, he brings the Bible to sustain his views, thus appealing to its authority instead of endeavoring to overthrow it. He shows from it (conclusively) that all the sons of Noah (Ham with the rest) were the fathers of the extant Caucasian races,--races which have remained nearly unaltered from the first, and that if any negroes proceeded from Ham’s descendants, it must have been by a miracle. That is the upshot of the matter. We may reject his conclusions, but we cannot find fault with his spirit, and I shall be glad to know that Dr. I. A. Smith, in the whole course of his public teaching, has displayed a reverence for the Bible equal to that of Agassiz. I have been on the most intimate terms with him: I never heard him express an opinion or a word adverse to the claims of revealed religion. His admirable lectures on embryology contain the most original and fundamental confutation of materialism I ever heard.
I make the “Manual” keep clear of slavery,--New Jersey, Pennsylvania (if little Delaware manumits perhaps I can find a corner for it), Ohio, Indiana or not as the case may be, leave out Illinois, which has too many Mississippi plants, take in Michigan and Wisconsin, at least Lapham’s[149] plants near the Lakes. That makes a very homogeneous florula.
I have made as usual much less progress than I supposed; so now, pressed at the same time with college duties, I have to work very hard indeed. Carey is coming on to help me.... Sheet full.
July 20, 1847.
Did you not know that an application has come from Wilkes through Pickering[150] to Sprague to make some botanical drawings for the Exploring Expedition, which, as I supposed they were to be for your use, I persuaded Sprague to promise to undertake, at ten dollars for each folio drawing with the dissections full.... The price we fixed is as low as Sprague can do them for, to any advantage, even if he had nothing else to do. The price I fixed for the drawings of “Genera,” and which I thought very large, ($6 per plate) does not thus far pay Sprague day wages, he takes so much time and care with them. I can only hope that the experience and facility he is getting will enable him to knock them off faster hereafter. You see therefore that Sprague cannot afford to make the drawings for Emory at the price he made those for Frémont--two dollars apiece. He will do them better; having now such skill in dissections he will display structure finely, but he must not undertake them under six dollars apiece, since they will cost him as much time as do my octavo “Genera” drawings. He might make what you want along this summer and autumn; I am not crowding him.
September 28, 1847.
I had a pleasant visit to Litchfield of three days, including the Sabbath. On the banks of a lake in the neighborhood I stumbled on a species of Cyperus dentatus, which in the “Flora of the Northern States” you credit to Litchfield, Brace.[151] This Mr. Brace, who is an uncle of J.’s, I met for a moment at New Milford, where he now lives. There are three great aunts, most excellent old ladies, who live in a simple and most delightful manner at Litchfield. The youngest, who has been J.’s guardian almost from infancy, returned with us to Boston for a week or two. Their brother, Mr. Pierce, who died only last year, was, it seems, an old friend of yours, through whom they feel almost acquainted with you. He passed a part of his life in New York, was a mineralogist, and I think I have seen his name as a member of the Lyceum. Pray tell me about him.
I found it not easy to make an arrangement in New York for the publication of the “Illustrated Genera,” by which I could get back directly the money I have expended in it. I think, therefore, I shall go on to defray the expenses of the first volume myself, which I think I shall be able to do, and thus manage to get the immediate proceeds myself. As to the “Manual,” I have unwittingly made it so large, in spite of all my endeavors at compression, that I can make nothing to speak of from the first edition, even if it sells right off.
TO J. L. L.
Monday evening, 9 o’clock, 1847.
When I reached home Henry and Agassiz were here. No one else came (as I expected), and Agassiz insisted on returning in the nine o’clock omnibus. Agassiz and Henry enjoy and admire each other so richly, and talk science so glowingly and admiringly, that I think I should not have been at all surprised to see them exchange kisses before they were done. And Agassiz told him he meant to come to Cambridge, and they began to talk of their children, and Agassiz read extracts from letters just received from his wife and his son, who--to Agassiz’s great pride and satisfaction--had just climbed the Fellenberg in the Breisgau, slept on the summit in the open air to see the sun rise in the morning, then descended and walked, I forget how many miles. Pretty well for a lad of eleven.
It is not a year since I told Henry that he should have either Agassiz or Wyman at Washington, but that we must have one of them at Cambridge. Beyond all expectation we have them both!
Henry gave me--I know not what led to it--a full detailed account of his life from early boyhood, which was full of curious interest and suggested much matter for reflection. In the evening we fell to discoursing on philosophical topics, and Henry threw out great and noble thoughts, and as we both fell to conversing with much animation my headache disappeared entirely. There is no man from whom I learn so much as Henry. He calls out your own powers, too, surprisingly....
I have been addling my brain and straining my eyes over a set of ignoble Pond-weeds (alias Potamogeton) trying to find the
“difference there should be Twixt tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee,”
and wasting about as much brain in the operation as your dear paternal would expend in an intricate law case, for all of which I suppose nobody will thank me and I shall get no fee. Indeed, few would see the least sense in devoting so much time to a set of vile little weeds. But I could not slight them. The Creator seems to have bestowed as much pains on them, if we may use such a word, as upon more conspicuous things, so I do not see why I should not try to study them out. But I shall be glad when they are done, which I promise they shall be before I sleep.
10.45 P.M.--There, the pond-weeds are done fairly.
TO W. J. HOOKER.
CAMBRIDGE, December 1st, 1847.
I reply early to your kind letter of October 30th to assure you that I shall with much pleasure contribute so far as I have opportunity to the new Botanical Museum, which, under your charge, and with your great opportunities for obtaining things from every part of the world, will soon become a magnificent collection. I have already several things to send you, such as two very large entwined stems of Aristolochia Sipho, which I brought from the mountains of Carolina.; a Dasylirion from Texas, etc. I have some time ago made arrangements for getting curious stems from Para, through a friend in Salem, who will also incite the masters and supercargoes of ships from that port which trade with various out-of-the-way parts of the world. The first things sent from Para were slabs rather than truncheons of wood (all ordinary exogenes), but I am promised palm stems and woody climbers, of which I shall take a portion to build up our general Natural History Museum at Cambridge, which with the zeal of Agassiz and Wyman is now likely to grow; the rest I will send to you. If you will send me a few duplicates of your circular, I will have them placed in proper hands where they may turn to good account. I am delighted to hear such pleasant things of Dr. Hooker, which I had also heard last summer from Mrs. McGilvray. I owe him a letter, but it is too late to send my congratulations, now that he is probably far on the way to India. I admire his zeal and energy, and wish him an excellent time and a prosperous return. The government has behaved most handsomely in affording him such important aid in his undertaking.
Proper specimens of maple sugar will keep perfectly well if placed in a glass jar with a closed cover. I will surely send some in the spring.
TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.
CAMBRIDGE, December 20, 1847.
I got a parcel from New York on Saturday evening, containing a few welcome plants of Wislizenus’[152] collection, and a set of Fendler’s from Santa Fé, up to Rosaceæ. The specimens are perfectly charming! so well made, so full and perfect. Better never were made. In a week I shall take them right up to study, and they are Rocky Mountain forms of vegetation entirely, so I can do it with ease and comfort. It is a cool region that, and dry. If these come from the plains, what will the mountains yield? Fendler must go back, or a new collector, now that order is restored there.
All Fendler’s collection will sell at once, no fear, such fine specimens and so many good plants. Pity that F. did not know enough to leave out some of the common plants, except two or three specimens for us, and bestow the same labor on the new plants around him.
Send on the rest soon.
Yours cordially, A. GRAY.
TO CHARLES WRIGHT.
CAMBRIDGE, January 17, 1848.
DEAR FRIEND,--That I ought to have replied to your letter of the 19th November, to say nothing of that of September 21 and June 18, there is no doubt. The letter I have carried in my pocket a good while, hoping to catch a moment somewhere and some time to write to you, especially as the time approaches in which I may be sending a parcel to New Orleans for you. But I have not had an hour’s leisure not demanded by letters of immediate pressing consequence, or in which I was not too tired to write.
There are many correspondents whom I have neglected almost as much as I have you. I have worked like a dog, but my work laid out to be finished last July is not done yet.
But from about the time of your last letter a providential dispensation has prevented me from doing what I would, namely, the sickness, by typhoid fever, of a beloved brother (a Junior in college here), who required every leisure moment from the time he became seriously sick up to the 9th inst.--a week ago--when it pleased the Sovereign Disposer of events, to whom I bow, to remove him to a better world; and I am but recently returned from the mournful journey to convey to the paternal home (in western New York) his mortal remains. This has somewhat interrupted the printing of the last sheets of my “Manual of North American Botany;” which, with all my efforts at condensation, has extended to almost eight hundred pages!! (12mo), including the introduction. It will be difficult to get the volume within covers. A year’s hard labor is bestowed upon it; I hope it will be useful and supply a desideratum. As a consolation for my honest faithfulness in making it tolerably thorough, and so much larger than I expected it would prove, it is now clear that I shall get nothing or next to it for my year’s labor. At the price to which it must be kept to get it into our schools, etc., there is so little to be made by it, that I cannot induce a publisher to pay the heavy bills, except upon terms which swallow up all the proceeds; or at the very least I may get $200, if it all sells, a year or two hence.
Meanwhile, I have paid the expenses principally incurred on the first volume of “Illustrated Genera,” which I can’t print and finish till the “Manual” is out; have run heavily into debt in respect to these works, which were merely a labor of love for the good of the science and an honorable ambition; and how I am going to get through I cannot well see....
I should despond greatly if I were not of a cheerful temperament....
I wish I could write to you as you wish, all about botany, etc. I wish I could aid you as I desire, but I fear it is impossible. I must have rest and less anxiety. Two more years like the last would probably destroy me. If I had an assistant or two, to take details off my hands, I might stand it; as it is I cannot. Carey spent three months with me last season, and was to study and ticket your Texan collection in my hands, take a set for his trouble, and Mr. Lowell and Mr. S. T. Carey would take what they needed and pay for them, so that I could pay your book-bill at Fowle’s. The utmost Carey found time to do was to throw the collection into orders; there they still lie, in the corner! There perhaps they had best lie, now, till the collection of the past season reaches me, when I will try to study them all together, along with Lindheimer’s collections, a set of which still waits for me to study them. Will you wonder that I am a little disheartened when, in spite of every effort, I make so little progress? And in six weeks I begin to lecture in college again; and in April the Garden will require more time than I can give it. Such are merely some of the things on my hands, some of my cares! Still I am interested in you, and in your collections, and will do what I can....
Then if you will continue to send seeds (pretty largely), also bulbs, cacti, tubers, etc., now in early spring (and root-cuttings of some vines), taking pains that they are sent in a direct way, so as to come alive in May, etc., I will get an appropriation allowed from the Garden for you. Don’t try other live plants till we have better communication with Texas. We have sunk money in this already and had to give it up....
Forgive my long neglect; accept my apologies. I’ll see if I can do any better hereafter, when I have a wife to write letters for me.
March 10th.
Besides all the rest, the Academy’s correspondence presses hard on me. I have written twenty-four letters for the steamer to-morrow. Fairly to keep up my correspondence and answer all my letters would take full two hours every day of the week except the Sabbath. So have mercy, and long patience....
Meanwhile my “Manual” is out; but not published till the 10th February. What can you expect from a man who takes up a job in February, 1847, to finish in May or June certain; but who, though he works like a dog, and throws by everything else, does not get it done till February comes round again. So it is only now that I have anything to send you. I am now printing off my “Genera Illustrata”--the text for one hundred plates; mean to have it out in a month; but I will not wait any longer....
TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.
CAMBRIDGE, February 29, 1848.
... Now for Fendler himself. He ought to go back, and without delay. He has gained much experience, and will now work to greater advantage. He makes unrivaled specimens, and with your farther instructions will collect so as to make more equable sets. If he will stay and bide his time he can get on to the mountains, and must try the higher ones, especially those near Taos.
Let him stay two years, and if he is energetic he will reap a fine harvest for botany, and accumulate a pretty little sum for himself, and have learned a profession, for such that of a collector now is. Drummond made money quite largely.
I had rather Fendler would go north and west than south of Santa Fé. New Spain and Rocky Mountain botany is far more interesting to us than Mexican.
TO JOHN TORREY.
March 29, 1848.
Your parcel came to-day; many thanks. After dinner I have just looked over the Mexican Compositæ of Gregg,[153] which are numerous, and quite a bonne bouche. My old love of the dear pappose creatures revived at the sight, and I longed to take them by the beard. If at liberty to do so (am I?) I think I will, at the same time I do the Santa-Féans; and at the same time I will study any of Abert’s or Emory’s Mexican or North Spain Compositæ you have not already disposed of. As to the parcel to be divided, of which there are no duplicates, whoever packed your parcel has taken care that there shall be pieces enough, if no specimens! They were in longer paper than the other bundles; not protected by binder’s board, and therefore both ends, for two or three inches, were nicely bent up against the ends of the shorter bundle next them; which was very pretty for the shape of the parcel, but death to many of the plants; for the fold came just below the heads in most cases, too many of which were decapitated like the victims of the (last but two) French revolution.
I have been going on with recitations for some time, twice a week (two hours), and to-day I began my lectures to the whole Junior class, on Geographical Botany for the present.
What with these duties, superintending gardener, and painting and papering in the house, and Sprague drawing for the second volume of “Genera,” and I printing the first, with the printer ever on my heels for copy, and at the same time printing Memoirs and Proceedings of the Academy, and managing large correspondence, you may conceive that my hands are full.
Yours most cordially, A. GRAY.
TO W. J. HOOKER.
CAMBRIDGE, 2d May, 1848.
I send ... a copy (roughly put into paper covers) of the first volume of “Genera Illustrata,” regretting there is not time to send you a bound copy. I hope you will like it. Sprague is improving fast, reads Brown’s papers, etc., and is getting a good insight into structural botany, even the nicest points. We mean to carry on the work, and I hope for considerable London sale of it. The price is $6, or in London, £1 10s., which I trust will be thought low. Please notice it in the “Journal.” The proceeds go principally to support Sprague in carrying on the work. I put his name on the title-page without his knowledge and at the expense of his great modesty.
I want to introduce the tussock grass on our eastern coast, where it will thrive well. Is it too late to send this spring? Or will you send in autumn?
P. S.--The last steamer brought good news of peace and strength in England, dissipating the alarm of many, but I felt none myself, having a strong confidence in the soundness of Old England and the durability of her institutions, of which I am here esteemed an over admirer.
Dr. Gray was married, May 4, 1848, to Jane L., daughter of Charles Greely Loring, a lawyer in Boston. In June they made a short journey to Washington, that Dr. Gray might, on undertaking to describe the plants of the United States Exploring Expedition, see Commodore Wilkes.
TO JOHN TORREY.
CAMBRIDGE, 8th May, 1848.
Yesterday I sent to Grant at Wiley’s for you a parcel containing some “Linnæas,” etc., received from Hamburg, your copy of Seubert on Elatine, and a bound copy of the “Genera Floræ Americæ Boreali-Orientalis Illustrata,” which I ask you to accept, and which I trust you will like. There is also a specimen inclosed of some vegetable product that has lately become somewhat common here, and which I thought you might like to examine. It is apparently of a rather complicated structure, in fruit evidently, but syncarpous; the heterogenous and baccate or fleshy ovaries being immersed without apparent order in a farinaceous receptacle. If you should be at all puzzled. with it, and can’t find out to what particular family it belongs, you might call in the aid of Mrs. Torrey and the girls, to aid in the investigation. I dare say you will make it out.
June, 1848.
I am just home this morning, and as I had no time yesterday to reply to your kind letter of Saturday, I write at once now....
Friday evening we were at the White house, to see Madame Polk. We have accomplished a great deal of sight-seeing and all in our week and a day, and J.
has enjoyed it much, except the drawback of not seeing Mrs. T. and the girls and yourself at home, which she greatly wished....
Now as to Exploring Expedition. We will talk it over in full when you come on here toward the end of this month.
Suffice it to say (as I am pressed for time) that I had made up my mind what I would do it for before I left home; that on looking over the collection, as to various parts of it, as far as time allowed, I found it less ample than I supposed, but with many difficulties owing to specimens in fruit only, or flower only. I think it no very awful job, if done in the way I propose, which is, not by monographs by people abroad, which the committee will not agree to, but by working up a part abroad in Hooker’s, or Bentham’s, or Garden of Plants herbarium.
The chairman of the committee and Wilkes behaved very well, and told me they were very desirous I should take it up.
On Friday evening Wilkes came in, before we went to the President’s; asked me to say what I would do. I told him at once what I would do (just what I had told J. before we left Cambridge), and Wilkes at once accepted my terms, as I supposed he would. My terms were based on the supposition that there is five years’ work in preparing for the press the collections left on hand, and in superintending the printing....
We must settle together the typographical form of the work, etc., when you come, and we will make the other writers conform to the plan we agree on, which perhaps you have already fixed.
Now I want a careful and active curator. What young botanist can I get?...
27th Nov., 1848.
Wright is up from Texas (with his mother at Wethersfield, Connecticut); he will soon be here as curator to me, taking Lesquereux’s[154] place, who has been with me a little, but now, as a consequence of his visit to Columbus, goes to aid Sullivant, with a provision that makes the truly worthy fellow perfectly happy. They will do up bryology at a great rate. Lesquereux says that the collection and library of Sullivant in muscology are “magnifique, superbe, the best he ever saw.”
TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.
January 24, 1849.
Halstead, I believe, has nearly decided to go on the Panama Railroad Survey; I trust to get Wright attached to the boundary survey. I have a letter from Fendler, in which he expressed his willingness to go to the Great Salt Lake country, if he can get government protection and food, etc. In a few days I shall write to Marcy; send him the sheets of “Plantæ Fendlerianæ,” and make a vigorous application for this aid. No doubt I shall get it, I think. But perhaps it might be almost as well for Fendler to go over with a party of emigrants directly to Mormon City. But probably there will be emigrants bound for the same place, accompanying the regiment, as near as they go. Fendler can do admirably well in that region, if he perseveres. But will he not take the gold-fever and leave us in the lurch? Will not living, etc., be very dear in Mormon City also? I fear it. I must leave. much to your discretion. Only if you think Fendler has a strong tendency to gold-hunting (which few could resist) let him go. And afterwards, if he chooses to collect plants, very well. Few can withstand the temptation when fairly within the infected region, and we hear the Mormons have found gold also....
February 25, 1849.
I have just received from the secretary of war, Mr. Marcy, and inclose to you, what I think will procure all the facilities that Fendler can wish from United States troops. If, as I was informed, the secretary has no right to issue an order for rations to Fendler, he has certainly done the best thing by issuing a recommendation which will, if the commander is favorably disposed, enable him to give all without any order. Indeed, I think we could ask nothing better....
In my haste, and multitude of business, I have shabbily neglected to send the copies of “Plantæ Fendlerianæ” to Hamburg for Braun. And now the Danes have blockaded the Elbe....
I think I shall soon send the smaller things to you by express, and retain the three volumes of “Memoirs” for some opportunity less expensive. We want railroad all the way to St. Louis.
I am crowded--overwhelmed--with work. But college work will be over in July, and the second volume of “Genera,” which I am now hard at work on, will soon be printed off; a week more and I shall have finished the copy.
I must then work at Exploring Expedition Compositæ, and soon at Fendlerianæ, and (when the sets arrive) at Lindheimer’s, if you wish. I have made a genus of the Texan Rue--between Ruta and Aplophyllum,--e. g., Rutosma. I think there are some good remarks you will like in the second volume of “Genera.”
I foresee an unusually good chance to get rid of the college work a year hence, and must therefore try to overhaul the Exploring Expedition plants, so as to get them into some shape, and next year (May or April) go abroad with them, sit down in London and Paris, and work them off. I will then drum up subscribers for Fendler and Lindheimer.
I want you to help me a little about Trees; our native trees up to Cornus inclusive, for this year, for the report I have promised the Smithsonian Institution.[155] I wish I had a good assistant; one who could work at botany. Perhaps I can find one abroad.
TO JOHN TORREY.
February 26, 1849.
Having determined on an expedition for Wright, you may be sure I was not going to be altogether disappointed. Accordingly I have got one all arranged (Lowell[156] and Greene subscribing handsomely) which is as much better than Emory’s as possible, and thus far everything has wonderfully conspired to favor it. Wright has left me this morning to go to his mother’s in Connecticut (Wethersfield); there to make his portfolios and presses; comes on to New York soon; takes first vessel for Galveston (I expect a letter from Hastings telling when it sails), and to reach Austin and Fredericksburg in time to accompany the troops that are about to be sent up, by a new road, across a new country, to El Paso, in New Mexico. Look on the map (Wislizenus) and you will see the region we mean him to explore this summer; the hot valley of Rio del Norte, early in the season, the mountains east, and especially those west in summer. He will probably stay two years, and get to Taos and Spanish Peaks this year or next. We shall have government recommendations to protection, and letters to an officer (commanding) who, through Henry, has already made overtures to collect himself or aid in the matter.
26th May, 1849.
I have finished all the copy of “Genera Illustrata,” vol. ii., at length; the printer has yet two or three sheets to set up. The plates are working off in New York. It will now soon be off my hands. It is long since I have done anything at Exploring Expedition plants. I am now going at them. It is a shabby, unsatisfactory collection....
CAMBRIDGE, November 2, 1849.
... Sorry I am that you could not be here while Harvey is here; he will he south by Christmas. He desires me to say that he expects to spend the first half of December in New York at Dr. Hosack’s, and will be most glad to see you. I am sure you will like him. We are perfectly charmed with him. A quiet, unaffected, pleasant man--extremely lovable. He works away at a table in my study. His course is a very interesting one. He is a beautiful writer, but not very fluent extempore, though with more practice he would be a fine lecturer. He has a good audience....
Sprague has promised now to take up and finish your quarto drawings. He says he can work but a little while at a time, from a difficulty of breathing. Had I foreseen his health and vigor giving way, I should not have undertaken the Trees, which, as to illustrations (as he is more fond of them than of anything else, and has made fine drawings), we have gradually enlarged our ideas about them much beyond the original plan, as to the figures. He must get this volume off his hands this winter, anyhow. The “Genera” will lie in abeyance....
My plan is only to bring out one volume of the Tree-Report next spring, and not to go beyond the limits of the United States proper, those of “Genera Illustrata,” except to mention the trees of the far West in a general way; otherwise it would be far too formidable....
Sir John Richardson dropped in on me the very day Harvey arrived, expressed regret he could not see you, learned here the rumored news of Franklin. I wish you could have been here at a little dinner party we made for them. He is at home by this time.
TO W. J. HOOKER.
December 3, 1849.
... We are glad to hear what fine discoveries your son is making in Thibet, etc.
I saw to-day for the first time, at Green’s, the Himalaya Rhododendrons....
I have just parted from Harvey, who has passed seven weeks with us, and having finished his course at the Lowell with much acceptance now joins his friends at New York and Philadelphia till Christmas, and then goes south to Florida, Alabama, and probably either to Jamaica (where Dr. Alexander now is) or to the mountains at the St. Iago end of Cuba, a terra incognita nearly. Harvey is a most winning man; my wife and I have become extremely attached to him, and are sorry to part with him.
We do not mean to let any naturalist be idle who comes to this country, so he is already engaged to give illustrations of our peculiar Algæ for the Smithsonian contributions and to prepare (after his return home, of course) a manual of United States Algæ after the fashion of his second edition of “British Algæ.” There will be no small demand for it....
P. S.--Mr. Wright got through to El Paso in southern New Mexico, and is on his way back, with, he says, a fine collection.
We got some fine daguerreotypes of Harvey, so much better, he says, than he has seen in England that he has had an extra one taken for Lady Hooker.
TO GEORGE BENTHAM.
CAMBRIDGE, January 7, 1850.
Your letter of December 4th and your very flattering article in the December number of “Hooker’s Journal” were both most gratifying; and the remarks on the Mimosa were timely, as I was just about consigning the manuscript of the earlier part of the new “Plantæ Lindheimerianæ” to the printer. I like what you say about “deduplication” much, and freely accept almost all. I took the name coined to my hand, not feeling at liberty to coin a new one. I think the production of new organs one before the other can be pretty well explained morphologically and anatomically, in accordance with your hint, and shall attempt to work it out in the third edition of my “Botanical Text-Book,” which I am now preparing for the press. I shall be most glad of any further hints.
May I ask you what you think of Adrien de Jussieu’s way of explaining the regular alternation of organs in the flower? I greatly incline to it....
I have to finish this Lindheimer collection, finish Fendler’s, distribute and study Wright’s collection when I get it, carry the “Botanical Text-Book” through the press, rewriting and expanding it (thus far I have made it all over), write the first volume of an elaborate report on the Trees of United States for the Smithsonian Institution, in fact a Sylva, with colored plates by Sprague (which I could not resist taking in hand, as that institution promised to bring it out, and handsomely, at their expense), and give my course of lectures in the college from March to June. When all this is done I can cross the Atlantic.... By engaging a brother professor to take the duties which I have for the autumn term (assigning to him pro rata from my salary), I shall be free until 1st March ensuing. But I mean to ask for leave of absence for a year, and trust I shall get it....
As far as it has yet shaped itself my plan is ... to sit down hard to work for the autumn and winter on the Exploring Expedition plants, to go to Paris in the spring and settle such questions as must be settled there after I come to know better than I now do (except in the Compositæ) what they are. Excepting the Oregon and Californian plants, which are assigned to Torrey, and the Sandwich Islands Collection, a fine one, the collection is a poor one, often very meagre in specimens, too much of an alongshore and roadside collection to be of great interest. I am not familiar with tropical forms and have no great love for them. I dislike to take the time to study out laboriously and guessingly, with incomplete specimens, and no great herbaria and libraries to refer to, these things which are mostly well known to botanists, though not to me, and I want to be taken off from North American botany for as short a time as possible. I must therefore come abroad with them, which the pay that is offered will enable me to do. I have found a good deal to interest me in the Compositæ, especially those of Rio Negro, of north Patagonia and of the Andes of Peru....
Now, will you take it as a bore, an imposition on your kindness, if I frankly ask whether I can possibly offer you any sort of inducement to aid me, at least so far as to run over the collections with me, and name those that are familiar to you as we pass, and refer others, as nearly as one can without study, to their proper places? Your mere comments in running through would save half my time.
It is most natural that you should not incline to any such trouble, and I know your hands are always full; so, if you say no, I shall feel it is quite right, and do the best I can....
We shall be most glad to visit you at Pontrilas house at whatever time best suits Mrs. Bentham and yourself, whether in summer or in autumn, any time before we settle down into our winter quarters....
With best wishes to Mrs. B. and yourself for the new year, I am very faithfully yours,
A. GRAY.
TO W. J. HOOKER.
April 2, 1850.
We were most glad to receive your kind favor of January 29, which, however, lay over a fortnight in England, and in the mean time we heard not only of Dr. Hooker’s capture, but also, with much gratification, of his release. What an indefatigable man he is!
Finding myself greatly behindhand, on account of various hindrances and miscalculation of time, and utterly unable to accomplish half the work I had intended to do this spring, I have decided to break off; and to sail, in a packet-ship from Boston, on the 5th of June, with Mrs. Gray, for Liverpool, which we may hope to reach by the close of that month. This will give us an opportunity of seeing England in its summer dress, and to make, almost immediately following the sea voyage, a trip up the Rhine to Switzerland. On our return I must set to work diligently, and for a little while with Mr. Bentham, who has kindly offered to look over the tropical collections, which I know little of, and love as little.
The rewriting of all the structural parts of my 3d edition of the “Botanical Text-Book,” which I was inadvertently drawn into, has proved a most time-consuming business. It is not yet through the press.
Wright’s collection of seeds I had divided into two parts, and I send you one by the hands of Mr. Lowell, who with his whole family goes out by this steamer. You will receive them in good time to raise them....
Mr. Lowell is of great use to us, in helping on these explorations, and I look to his visit to Europe, the sight of the great collections, and the society of naturalists to strengthen his tastes and fire his zeal in these respects.
I long to have him and Mrs. Lowell, a very good. friend of ours, make your acquaintance.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] This colony was composed of rigid Presbyterians, who desired to leave Ireland to escape various persecutions. They sent out the Rev. Mr. Boyd, early in 1718, with an address to the Governor of Massachusetts. The address, now in the Archives of the New Hampshire Historical Society, was signed by three hundred and nineteen persons, nine of whom were clergymen. The report brought back by Mr. Boyd of his reception by the governor and of the prospects of the country was so favorable that the addressors converted their property into money, and embarked in five ships for Boston, which they reached August 4, 1718. In Boston they separated for different places, but the larger part were sent to Worcester, then a frontier settlement of fifty-eight dwellings and two hundred inhabitants, but needing a larger population as protection from the Indians. John Gray--there were two of his name in the original party--went to Worcester, where he owned considerable land, and was evidently a man of influence in the colony, to judge from the various public offices held by him.
[2] Robert Gray, one of John Gray’s sons, was twenty years old when he came to America. There is a tradition in the family that the acquaintance and courtship began on the voyage.
[3] Sauquoit was a settlement in the eastern part of the town of Paris, the township so named in grateful recognition of a supply of food, sent by a Mr. Paris, of Oswego, at a time when the early settlers were near starving.--A. G.
[4] Moses Gray was the eighth child,--a boy and a girl were born later,--and one step-brother, Watson, survived Moses Gray. Moses Wiley Gray made the journey to Sauquoit, on horseback, taking before him his son Moses, then a boy of eight. The Mohawk Valley at this time was the far West, with only slow and tedious communication beyond Schenectady, but opening, in its lovely tributary valleys, tempting regions of hill and valley, well wooded, with clear, sparkling streams. The land offered good farming opportunities when cleared of trees, and the rapid streams gave good promise of water power. Here Moses Wiley Gray took a farm on the top of a hill, and cultivated the land for ten years. He was injured by the fall of a tree, and his leg was amputated. He died the next day, May 8, 1803, leaving his son Moses, with his stepmother and her children largely dependent on his assistance.
[5] She was married in 1788.
[6] The house is still standing which, built in 1648 by an ancestor of Ralph Waldo Emerson, was bought by William Howard, in 1669.
[7] Asa’s mother was but four years old, when the family moved to Sauquoit, and well remembered her mother’s crying at the crossing of the Hudson River, which must have seemed formidable in the small boats of that time. Joseph Howard was a man of a very lovable character, as shown from the affectionate remembrances of him by his grandchildren, the eldest of whom, Asa, was much with him. He was a deacon of the First Church in Sauquoit for forty years, and one of the leading men in the town. He died in 1849.
[8] Moses Gray was a man of great activity and energy. He soon added a shoe-shop to his tannery, where he hired a few hands to make shoes from the hides he tanned, taking these again by wagon to Albany, a journey of many days, where he bought his skins and some necessary supplies. Money was scarce in the newly settled country, and the things needed were mostly got by exchange. Meantime, as the chance came, he was buying land on the hills around. Clayville is where the valley narrows towards the source of the Sauquoit Creek, as “rivers” are called in that neighborhood in old Dutch fashion, and the hills are sharper and rougher. The scenery, however, is still beautiful, and the house which Moses Gray built two or three years later yet stands, with a lovely near view of stream and hill and wood. Asa Gray remembered his father building it. Busy as the father was out of doors, the mother was perhaps busier still. Asa, the younger brother by the first wife, was dying of consumption; he was moved on a bed from Sauquoit to Paris Furnace, and died very soon after, in May, 1811, aged twenty-three. When the child was born, November 18, 1810, it was carried to him to see, and he said he wished they would call it Asa, if it had had no name as yet decided on. He was of a singularly sweet and gentle character. The step-brothers were taken in turn to be taught and trained. The hands employed on farm or in trade were generally lodged and boarded. Often their clothes were mended or made. The wheat and grain were home-raised, as were all the vegetables. There was little fresh meat, except when a sheep or beef was killed, and that meant salting and curing. Butter and cheese were all homemade, and could be taken to Albany for sale, as was also grain; as the farm grew, more cows were added. Then the clothing was homemade. The wool for flannel sheets and underclothing and for the men’s clothes was home-spun, the nicer portions taken off and carded separately, and spun as worsted for the children’s and women’s dresses; also the yarn for socks for the whole family. A spinning-girl was hired for part of the year, for flax was also spun for the house linen and for wearing-apparel. The weaving was hired out. The tailor came by the week to make up the clothing with the mother’s help, and after the tannery was given up, the shoe-maker came at intervals to make the shoes. As the girls grew older they took their share at the wool and flax wheels. It is said that the first spinning of flax on the small wheel was introduced by the party of Scotch-Irish emigrants of 1718; that the women gave lessons to the women of Boston on Boston Common, and the fashion was so set for that spinning. It is also said that the Irish potato was first introduced into New England by these same colonists.
A widowed sister came with her children to make her home under the same roof when the Grays moved later to a larger farm, and there seemed always some boy to be housed and taught and trained. Though his aid might tell out of doors, the home care came upon the mother. But Mrs. Gray was a woman of singularly quiet and gentle character, with great strength and decision, and possessed a wonderful power of accomplishing and turning off work; a woman of thoughtful, earnest ways, conscientious and self-forgetting.
The father was quick, decided, and an immense worker; from him the son took his lively movements and his quick eagerness of character, perhaps also his ready appreciation of fun.
[9] His mother, having another child, was probably glad to have the active boy safe for a few hours. Her young sisters lived not far away, and the youngest aunt, a girl of ten, was proud to take him to school; she had already taught him his letters. His father promised him a spelling-book of his own as soon as he reached _baker_, which was a marked spot of advance in the spelling-book. A few weeks saw him far enough on, and the coveted prize was given. He went proudly to school the next day, and as he could not speak to the teacher to proclaim his triumph, he walked in front of her desk to his seat, waving the book with a great flourish before her! It was just before he was three years old.
[10] Of one of these, his friend, now over eighty years old, gives an account in the succeeding letter:--
SAUQUOIT, _February 19, 1888_.
DEAR A.--I would like to give you some information of your uncle’s early life if I were well informed, but, I have only one little incident, and perhaps that would be of small account at the present era, though at the time it took place it was of great moment to us both as children. Asa lived with his parents at Paris Furnace, now Clayville. I lived where Mr. Bragg afterward built his new house. Well, we had a lovely teacher that summer by the name of Sally Stickney, living at Colonel Avery’s. She ruled by gentleness. For our class she had an old-fashioned two-shilling piece, with a hole through to insert a yard of blue ribbon. She put this over the head of the one that stood first in our class. So it traveled every night, all that summer, with some one of us, until the ribbon was worn and faded. But more than all that, the one that stood at the head on the last day of school was to be the owner of that two-shilling piece that we had watched with jealous eyes so many weeks, and studied Webster’s old spelling-book so hard to gain. I think our eyes must have magnified it, for I have never seen a coin since that seemed so large. I think it was the same in Asa’s eyes. Well, with hearts beating fast, and eyes on the coveted prize, we were called on the last day of school to spell; we took our places; I was at the head, Asa next. I missed and he went above me; my all was gone, but it was worse to have him point his finger at me and say out loud “kee-e-e.” I braved it without a tear; a few more words would end the strife. It came around to him, and he missed; how quick I went above him; but in an instant he dropped his head on the desk before him and wept as though his heart would break. School was dismissed, scholars were leaving; still he did not move, until our kind teacher came to him, whispered to him, soothed and petted him; then he jumped up and ran, I suppose wishing me in Halifax. I felt sorry for him and would have been willing to divide with him if he had not crowed over me so. I ran nearly all the way home--a good mile--with my treasure, in great haste to have some one tell me the best way to invest my money. I was told to go another three quarters of a mile to Stephen Savage’s store, spend it for calico, piece it up, to keep forever. I could get only one yard for my two-shilling piece, not nearly as good as can be bought now for three cents a yard. Not a trace of the quilt is left, nor of the old schoolhouse, or of those merry children; perhaps a few have wandered on to fourscore years. So it is little I can relate of his childhood, as the next year we moved from that district, but as years passed on I often heard of his rising fame with pleasure. If Eli Avery were living he would have been his best biographer in this place.
The time has flown so fast since all this transpired, it seems as if his tears had hardly dried before my grandchildren were studying his Botanies.
Two years ago the 9th day of September, when the doctor was visiting in Sauquoit, he called here and remarked, in his smiling way, “that he had got all over feeling badly about _that_.” I said, “And well you may when you have received so many honors since then.”
Your loving friend,
HARRIET ROGERS.
A neighbor who survived to a great age also told a story of Dr. Gray’s boyhood, which he said he had from Dr. Gray’s father:--
One day he had been set to hoe a certain amount of corn, and his father found him reading instead of at his work. He gave him his choice, to finish his task and then read comfortably, or to sit there in the field all day in the hot sun, which one knows is no pleasant thing in August, and read. He chose the reading, and his father said then, “I made up my mind he might make something of a scholar, but he would never make a farmer!” And so his farther education was decided.
[11] Asa Gray was the eldest of eight children, three sisters and four brothers, of whom there survive two sisters and two brothers.
[12] Dr. Gray visited Fairfield again in the summer of 1860 or 1861. He pointed out his old room, and told about some of the pranks he and his room-mate Eli Avery had played there as boys, especially once when they barred their room, escaped through the window by clambering down a rope, and then enjoyed the efforts of the master to break the door down. Oddly enough there was then a fresh panel in the door, as if a later generation had tried the same trick. There were a great many stories told of his exploits as a boy. But he said everything had been fathered upon him, and that few were really true. He was no doubt restless and active, and learning quickly and easily would have leisure for some mischief, but he said, “I always learned my lessons.” He loved to recall the long rambles through the woods on Saturday holidays, and how in early spring he and his companions would climb to a lookout and see where columns of smoke could be seen above the trees, and so aim for the spot where they were making maple sugar. There they would beg a little syrup, and, boiling it down over their own fire and cooling it on snow, make a candy more delicious than any confectionery of after life. He remembered how he trained himself to know the trees by their bark as he ran through the woods, without looking up at the leaves, having then the keen power of observation though no especial interest in botany. For, as he always said, his first fancy was for mineralogy rather than for botany.
And he told how when he was a medical student, as so many about him were smoking, he tried it too; it made him very sick at first, and took him some time to get accustomed to it. At last, as he sat one evening before the fire and smoked, he said to himself, “Really, I am beginning to like it. It will become a habit; I shall be dependent upon it.” And so he threw his cigar into the fire and gave up smoking entirely.
[13] In later life the novels were always saved for long journeys. The novel of the day was picked out, and one pleasure of a long day’s ride in the train was to sit by his side and enjoy his pleasure at the good things. The glee and delight with which he read Hawthorne, especially the _Wonder-Book_ and _Tanglewood Tales_, make days to remember. So he read George Eliot, and Adam Bede carried him happily through a fit of the toothache. Scott always remained the prime favorite, and his last day of reading, when the final illness was stealing so unexpectedly and insidiously on, was spent over _The Monastery_, which he had been planning to read on his homeward voyage in 1887.
[14] It was established as a college in 1812, having existed as a school in the academy since 1809. There were then only five others in the United Stated: Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Dartmouth, and Baltimore. The war of 1812 with Great Britain made a demand for army surgeons along the frontier, and New York and Boston were too far to send the young men to be educated. Dr. Hadley was professor in the literary academy, and Dr. Willoughby, who had a wide medical reputation, was also in Fairfield. They planned a medical college, and applied to the legislature for aid; the sum of $5,000 was granted, and later, in 1812, $10,000. The first Faculty was organized by the Board of Regents of the New York State University, which had control of the educational institutions in the State. It grew rapidly in favor, and soon outnumbered the schools of the large cities. In 1820 the school had one hundred students, and increased to two hundred and seventeen later, and was the largest medical school in the country, except the one at Philadelphia. After the Albany and Geneva medical schools were established, it was seen there was no need of three so near together, and Fairfield Medical College was discontinued in 1840. In the list of graduates of Fairfield Academy were Albert Barnes, the noted expositor, General Halleck, of the United States Army, and James Hadley, professor of Greek at Yale and the distinguished linguist. In the records of the academy it is stated that “Asa Gray entered Fairfield Academy in the fall of 1825, and at the second weekly meeting joined the Calliopean Society of the institute. His handwriting on the register is still preserved, as well as all his doings as a boy while here, since he entered at an early age, being in fact much younger than the majority of the students.” He graduated from the medical college January 25, 1831 in a class of forty-four. His rank was seventeen in the class on graduation. The subject of his thesis was “Gastritis.” Two old catalogues are preserved at Fairfield. In the first there is the programme of studies at the academy for the year 1826; the other, dating January, 1832, contains a list of the professors of the medical college, the cost of instruction, and the outlines of two courses of lectures. One of them was given by Dr. Mather, who was a fellow student of Asa Gray’s, and who still, at over eighty, retains a lively recollection of the eager, active young man whom his friends already thought would make his mark in the world; the other by Dr. Gray himself. This was one of the first courses of lectures which he delivered. The ticket-fee was four dollars. He kept through life a certain love for medicine and surgery, and a lively interest in its science and progress. These old studies and the country practice he had with the physician who was always his good friend, Dr. Trowbridge, often served him on his journeys, when a regular practitioner was not within easy reach.
[15] Amos Eaton, 1776-1842. Graduated from Williams in 1799. Teacher, lecturer, and author of _Manual of the Botany of North America_, as well as of many reports on geological surveys.
[16] College catalogue of Fairfield, 1830-31.
[17] Lewis C. Beck, 1798-1853; professor in Albany Academy; author of _Botany of the United States North of Virginia_.
[18] Lewis David Schweinitz, 1780-1834; the first American who studied and described the fungi of the United States. He wrote also on other North American cryptogams and carices.
[19] John E. Le Conte, 1784-1860; formerly major in United States army. His first botanical publication was a catalogue of the plants on the island of New York, in 1810. He later wrote chiefly on entomology.
[20] It appears that in December, 1834, I read to the Lyceum of Natural History my first paper, _Monograph of North American Rhynchosporæ_, and my second, _New or Rare Plants of the State of New York_. They must have been printed early in 1835.--A. G.
[21] J. G. C. Lehmann, 1793-1860; professor at Hamburg.
[22] George Francis Reuter, 1815-1873; directer of the Botanical Garden at Geneva; curator of Boissier’s herbarium.
[23] Edward T. Channing; professor of rhetoric and oratory at Harvard University.
[24] Daniel Treadwell; professor in Harvard University of applied physics; distinguished inventor in mechanics, especially in the welding of steel.
[25] John H. Redfield; curator of the herbarium of the botanical department of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Science.
[26] _American Jour. Sci._, xxv. 346-350.
[27] Dr. Trowbridge.
[28] _North American Gramineæ and Cyperaceæ_, of which Part I. was issued in 1834, Part II. in 1835. This was the first separate and individual publication by Dr. Gray. Sir W.J. Hooker said of it:--[It] “may fairly be classed among the most beautiful and useful works of the kind that we are acquainted with. The specimens are remarkably well selected, skillfully prepared, critically studied, and carefully compared with those in the extensive and very authentic herbarium of Dr. Torrey.”
[29] Alluding to the then popular squib of Major Jack Downing’s letters.
[30] S. Wells Williams, 1812-1884. Went as missionary to China in 1833. Wrote a Chinese dictionary and other works; translated Genesis and Matthew into Japanese also. Later was secretary of the American Legation to China; returned to America in 1875.
[31] _Elements of Botany._
[32] Chester Dewey, 1784-1887; professor in Williams College, Massachusetts. Removed to Rochester, N.Y., 1836, where he died. “Carried on the study of Carex and published on them for more than forty years” [A. G.].
[33] Jacob Whitman Bailey. 1811-1857; professor in the Military Academy at West Point. One of the earliest students of American Algæ, and distinguished also for his microscopic researches in botany.
[34] Charles W. Whipple, died in 1855. Was educated at West Point, where probably he was a pupil of Dr. Torrey. He was never in the army, but studied law and practiced in Detroit; was made Judge, then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Michigan. Ex-officio regent of the State university.
[35] David Bates Douglass, 1790-1849. He held the professorship of natural philosophy and civil architecture in the University of New York, and was afterward president of Kenyon College. He laid out Greenwood Cemetery.
[36] Dr. Thomas Raffles; a distinguished Congregational clergyman in Liverpool from 1812 to 1863.
[37] John Shepherd, b. 1764. For thirty-five years at the Liverpool Botanic Garden.
[38] Peter D. Knieskern, M. D., 1798-1871. “Botanized over the pine-barrens of New Jersey with utmost assiduity and skill, a simple-hearted, unpretendingly good and faithful man.... Few botanists have excelled him in their knowledge of the plants of the region in which he resided, and none in zeal, simplicity, and love of science for its own sake.”--A. G.
[39] Thomas Nuttall, 1784-1859; a great traveler and explorer. Came to the United States in 1807. His writings are intimately connected with the development of North American botany.
[40] Robert K. Greville M. D., 1794-1866; author of _Scottish Cryptogamic Flora_, _Flora Edinensis_, and _Algæ Britannicæ_.
[41] Robert Graham, M. D., 1786-1845; professor of botany in the University of Edinburgh.
[42] William Nicoll. Invented section-cutting of recent and fossil woods in 1827.
[43] James Forbes, 1809-1861; professor of natural philosophy in the University of Edinburgh.
[44] Robert Jameson 1774-1854; professor of natural history in the University of Edinburgh.
[45] John Hutton Balfour, M. D. 1808-1885; professor of botany in Glasgow, and afterwards in the University of Edinburgh.
[46] Sir Charles Bell, 1774-1842; a very distinguished surgeon; author of _Anatomy of Expression_ and many celebrated works. He accepted the chair of surgery at Edinburgh, 1836.
[47] John Abercrombie, M. D., 1781-1844; celebrated Scotch physician and author.
[48] Sir Robert Christison, 1798-1882; professor of materia medica in the University of Edinburgh.
[49] James T. W. Johnston, 1796-1865; agricultural chemist; professor at Durham. Lectured in the United States.
[50] Francis Boott, 1792-1863. Born in Boston, United States. Early removed to London, where he studied and practiced medicine a few years. “A good botanist, and in his later life devoted to the study of Carices” [A. G.].
[51] John Joseph Bennett, 1801-1876; keeper of the herbarium of the British Museum. “One of the most learned and modest of men” [A. G.].
[52] Sir John Richardson, M. D., 1787-1865. “The well-known Arctic explorer, zoölogist, and botanist” [A. G.].
[53] David Don, 1795-1856; librarian of the Linnæan Society; professor of botany in King’s College, London.
[54] Frederic Pursh, 1774-1820. Emigrated to America, 1799. Traveled and collected much; settled later in Montreal, where he died.
[55] Aylmer Bourke Lambert, 1762-1842; author of the _Genus Pinus_ and the _Genus Cinchona_. Owned a very large herbarium comprising plants of Pursh, who published under his liberal patronage.
[56] John Forbes Royle, M. D.; a surgeon in the East India Company. Wrote on the botany of the Himalaya.
[57] John Edward Gray, 1800-1875; keeper of the zoölogical collections of the British Museum for many years. “Of persistent ardor, indomitable energy, and great practical power” [A. G.].
[58] William Clift, 1775-1849; curator of the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons.
[59] Peter Mark Roget, M. D., 1779-1869; secretary of the Royal Society, London. Wrote _Animal and Vegetable Physiology_, and the well-known _Thesaurus_.
[60] Richard Taylor; printer; for many years secretary of the Linnæan Society.
[61] Francis Bauer; botanical artist to George III.
[62] Thomas Horsfield, M. D., 1774-1859. Born in Pennsylvania. After sixteen years in Java, passed the rest of his life in London as keeper of the museum of the East India Company. Brown & Bennett published part of his collections, _Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores_.
[63] I forgot to mention also some bricks from Babylon, covered with arrowhead characters, which were the most interesting relics of antiquity I almost ever saw.--A. G.
[64] Nathaniel R. Ward, 1791-1868; inventor of the Wardian case.
[65] Archibald Menzies, 1754-1842; the botanist who accompanied Vancouver in his voyage to the west coasts of North and South America. His collections are in the Edinburgh and Kew Herbariums.
[66] Sir Charles Lyell, the geologist.
[67] Edwin J. Quekett, 1808-1847. Wrote much on the microscopic structure of plants and animals.
[68] John Miers, 1789-1879; a botanist who studied in South America and wrote many papers.
[69] Thomas Walter, d. 1788, in Carolina, U. S. Wrote _Flora Caroliniana_.
[70] James Scott Bowerbank, 1797-1877. Wrote on Sponges and the Fossil Fruits of the London Clay.
[71] Edward Forster, 1765-1849. Made vice-president of the Linnæan Society in 1828.
[72] Herbert Gray Torrey, born just before Dr. Gray sailed, was his godson.
[73] Mr. George P. Putnam; the American publisher and bookseller, at this time established in London.
[74] William Valentine, a very promising young botanist, who wrote valuable papers on the structure of mosses. Went early to Tasmania, where he died.
[75] Pulled down in 1891.
[76] Theodore Hartweg, died in 1871. Explored in Mexico and California, 1836 to 1847; later director of the Grand-ducal Gardens, Swetzingen, Baden.
[77] Philip Barker Webb, 1793-1854; a “distinguished English botanist residing in Paris, of vast and varied knowledge. He accumulated one of the largest herbaria, bequeathed to the Duke of Tuscany.”--A. G.
[78] Beaupré Charles Gaudichaud, 1780-1854; French botanist. Went round the world in the Bonite, and published the Botany of the expedition.
[79] Jacques Gay, died 1863. Born in Switzerland, and a pupil of Gaudin.
[80] Jean F. Camille Montagne, 1794-1865; surgeon in the French army. Retired in 1830, and devoted himself to cryptogamic botany.
[81] Achille Richard, 1794-1852; professor of botany in the Ecole de Médecine, Paris; son of L. Claude Richard.
[82] Edouard Spach, 1801-1879; native of Strasburg, many years keeper of the herbarium at the Jardin des Plantes.
[83] Charles François Brisseau Mirbel, 1776-1854; one of the most distinguished vegetable anatomists of the age. His earliest publication in 1801.
[84] Auguste de St. Hilaire, 1779-1853. Accompanied the Duke of Luxembourg on his voyage to Brazil, where he spent six years, and published a _Flora of Brazil_, 1825, and many other works.
[85] Baron Benjamin Delessert, 1773-1847; a French financier and philanthropist. Associated with De Candolle in the publication of the _Icones Selectæ_.
[86] Jean Louis Berlandier, died 1851; a Belgian. Established as an apothecary at Matamoras, 1827 or 1828. The first botanist to explore New Spain. He also made large collections in western Texas.
[87] Adolphe Theodore Brongniart, 1801-1876; distinguished French botanist, more especially in fossil botany; professor of botany at the Jardin des Plantes.
[88] The rediscovery of Shortia in 1878 is described on p. 682.
[89] Nicolas Charles Seringe, 1775-1856; professor at Lyons. Seringia named for him.
[90] Esprit Requien,1788-1851; a pupil of A. P. de Candolle at Montpellier. Often quoted in the _Flore Française_.
[91] Michel Felix Dunal, 1789-1856; professor of botany at Montpellier. “One of the earliest friends of A. P. De Candolle. Author of several important monographs” [A. G.].
[92] Alire Raffeneau Delile, 1778-1850; director of the Garden of Agriculture established at Cairo. Later he succeeded De Candolle in the Botanic Garden, Montpellier. A celebrated botanist.
[93] There is a gigantic statue of Columbus, placed in a conspicuous place and looking down into the harbor. They make very much of him now, as well they may; they derided him when living, they set up his image long after he is dead. Of course we are very much obliged to him, for if he had not discovered America what would have become of us!--A. G.
[94] Gaetano Savi, 1769-1844.
[95] Antonio Targioni-Tozzetti, 1785-1856; distinguished Florentine botanist.
[96] Giovanni Battista Amici, 1784-1863; an Italian astronomer, especially skilled in the construction of optical instruments.
[97] Horatio Greenough; the American sculptor in Florence.
[98] Roberto de Visiani, 1809-1878; professor of botany at Padua; author of a _Flora Dalmatica_.
[99] B. Biasoletto, M. D., 1793-1858. Triest. “A botanist of merit and investigator of Algæ of the Adriatic” [A. G.].
[100] M. J. Tommasini, 1794-1879. Triest. Author of a Botany of Mt. Slavonik, Istria.
[101] Stephen Ladislaus Endlicher, 1804-1849; professor of botany in the University of Vienna; author of _Genera Plantarum_.
[102] Aloys Putterlich, 1810-1845; keeper of the Botanical Museum, Vienna.
[103] Edward Fenzl, 1807-1879; professor of botany and director of the Botanic Garden at Vienna.
[104] Dr. Heinrich Schott, 1794-1865; director of the Imperial Gardens, Schönbrunn. “He was the highest authority on Aroideæ” [A. G.].
[105] A. C. J. Corda, 1809-1849. Prague. A distinguished mycologist. Lost at sea on returning from America.
[106] Karel B. Presl, 1794-1852; professor at Prague and curator of the herbarium.
[107] Christian Gottfried Nees von Esenbeck, 1776-1858; professor of natural history at Bonn and Breslau.
[108] Joseph Gerhard Zuccarini, 1797-1848; professor of botany at Munich. Among other publications he assisted in describing the plants collected and described by Siebold in the _Flora Japonica_.
[109] Julius Hermann Schultes, 1804. Died in Munich, 1840.
[110] Jean Etienne Duby, 1797-1885; long one of the Genevese clergy and a botanist and colleague of Augustin Pyramus do Candolle.
[111] Dr. Gurdon Buck.
[112] Hugo von Mohl, 1805-1872. Born at Stuttgart. Professor of botany at Tübingen. “Chief of the vegetable anatomists of this generation” [A. G.].
[113] Eduard Friedrich Pöppig, 1798-1868; professor of zoölogy at Leipsic. Made collections of plants in Cuba, Chili, Peru, and on the upper Amazon.
[114] Christian Friedrich Schwägrichen, 1775-1853; professor of natural history at Leipsic.
[115] Heinrich Gottlieb Reichenbach, 1793-1879; professor of botany at Dresden. A voluminous author, especially of illustrated works on European plants.
[116] D. F. L. von Schlechtendal, 1784-1866. University of Halle. Editor of the _Linnæa_ and _Botanische Zeitung_.
[117] Christian Schkuhr, 1741-1811. _History of Carices_, 1802.
[118] Dr. J. H. Klotzsch, 1805-1860; keeper of the Royal Herbarium at Berlin.
[119] Karl Sigismund Kunth, 1788-1850. Appointed professor of botany at Berlin, 1819. Author of _Enumeratio Plantarum_ and other well-known descriptive works.
[120] Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg, 1794-1876. Berlin. Student of the microscope, and author of works on the lower forms of plants and animals.
[121] Heinrich Friedrich Link, 1767-1851. Professor at Breslau, then at Berlin. Wrote _Anatomy of Plants_ and _Elements of Botanical Philosophy_.
[122] _A Flora of North America_; containing abridged descriptions of all the known indigenous and naturalized plants growing north of Mexico; arranged according to the natural system. By John Torrey and Asa Gray. New York. 8vo; vol. i., 1838-1840, pp. xvi, 711; vol. ii., 1841-1843, pp. 504.
[123] S. Constantine Rafinesque-Schmaltz, d. 1840. A Sicilian by birth. First arrived in the United States, 1802, for three years; returned in 1815, and explored the Alleghanies and Southern States. “An eccentric but certainly gifted personage, connected with the natural history of this country for the last thirty-five years” [A. G.].
[124] Benjamin D. Greene, 1798-1862. First studied law; then medicine in Scotland and Paris. Devoted himself to botany. “His very valuable herbarium and botanical library were bequeathed to the Boston Natural History Society. He was always a most liberal and wise patron of science” [A. G.].
[125] Jacob Bigelow, M. D., 1787-1870; an eminent Boston physician; author of the _Floral Bostoniensis_, 1814.
[126] George B. Emerson, 1797-1881; an eminent teacher in Boston, Mass.; author of _Trees and Shrubs of Massachusetts_.
[127] Director of Kew Gardens.
[128] Ferdinand Lindheimer, 1801-1879. Died at New Braunfels, Texas. A German. “An assiduous and excellent collector and a keen observer; his notes, full and discriminating, add not a little to the value of the collections” [A. G.].
[129] Edward Tuckerman, 1817-1886; professor at Amherst. “The most profound and trustworthy American lichenologist of the day” [A. G.].
[130] Benjamin Peirce, 1809-1880; professor of mathematics, Harvard University.
[131] Carl Geyer, 1809-1853; a German botanist who explored the basin of the upper Mississippi with Nicollet under the Bureau of Topographical Engineers, 1836-1840. Afterwards crossed the Rocky Mountains to Oregon.
[132] Lecture to his class in college.
[133] Dr. Gray imported a quantity of small evergreens from England and planted the ground extensively, adding also many other kinds.
[134] Dr. Rugel came to America, 1842; settled in eastern Tennessee and collected in the southeastern States.
[135] To his college class.
[136] Dr. Jeffries Wyman.
[137] This was Dr. Gray’s second course of Lowell lectures. Dr. John A. Albro, the Congregationalist minister of Cambridge, was his pastor.
[138] G. J. Mulder, 1802-1880; professor of chemistry in the University of Utrecht. Wrote on Animal and Vegetable Physiology.
[139] Carl H. Schultz-Schultzenstein, 1798-1871; professor of physiology in the University of Berlin. Wrote voluminously upon Cyclosis and the Vessels of the Latex, etc.
[140] Dr. Charles Danbeny, G. B., 1795-1867; professor of botany and rural economy at Oxford; chemist and geologist.
[141] William Oakes, 1799-1848. “The most thorough and complete collector and investigator of New England plants” [A. G.].
[142] Alphonse Wood, 1810-1881; author of popular botanical text-books.
[143] His brother, then living with him in Cambridge to enter Harvard.
[144] Christian Hendrik Persoon, 1755-1838; a botanist at the Cape of Good Hope. Died in Paris at a very advanced age. Fungologist.
[145] The third course of Lowell lectures.
[146] Augustus Fendler, 1813-1883. Came from Prussia to America in 1840. Collected in New Mexico, and on the Andes about Tovar in Venezuela, and in Trinidad. “A close, accurate observer, a capital collector and specimen-maker; his distributed specimens are classical. Of a scientific turn of mind in other lines than botany” [A. G.].
[147] Spencer F. Baird, afterward widely known as secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.
[148] A relative left Nuttall a comfortable little estate and property on condition that he should not be away from it more than three months in the year. He managed to come to America again by taking the three last months of one year and the three first of the next.
[149] Increase Allen Lapham, 1811-1875; author of a Catalogue of Plants in the Vicinity of Milwaukee.
[150] Charles Pickering, 1805-1878. “Author of _Geographical Distribution of Plants and Animals and Man’s Record of his own Existence_, largely a record of changes in the habitat of plants. A monument of wonderful industry” [A. G.].
[151] John P. Brace, Litchfield, Conn.; an early botanist and mineralogist. His herbarium went to Williams College.
[152] A. Wislizenus, M. D., b. 1810. Explored New Mexico and Mexico; was arrested as a spy. On returning to the United States published a memoir of the tour, 1846-1847.
[153] Josiah Gregg, died in California, 1850; made excellent collections in Chihuahua and in the Valley of the Rio Grande. Author of the _Commerce of the Prairies_.
[154] Leo Lesquereux, 1806-1889; the leading fossil botanist of America, and a distinguished bryologist.
[155] Sprague made, under Dr. Gray’s directions, some drawings in color of the work planned, _The Trees of North America_. The work was never completed, too many things, expense, etc., coming in the way, but the few plates printed and colored by Prestele were issued in a small quarto pamphlet by the Smithsonian Institution in 1891.
[156] John Amory Lowell, 1798-1881; a Boston merchant, and a liberal patron of botany. He bought many valuable books and collected a fine herbarium. He shaped the policy and direction of the Lowell Institute founded by his cousin, John Lowell.