Chapter IV: A Decade of Work at Home (2)

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 †.