Chapter VIII: Final Journeys and Work (3)

Since my former sheet, Farlow and I have been mousing about the city of Mexico, I coughing most of the time, in a clear, dry air and nearly cloudless sky, weather which should be most delightful, but somehow it is bad for the throat (for the natives as well as for us), and the rarefied air puts one out of breath at a little exertion; mornings and evenings cool and fresh, the midday warm, in the sun trying.... Called in a physician, a sort of medical man to American embassy, who came here with Maximilian, and stayed. Very intelligent. Ordered us to come here as soon as Mrs. Gray could travel. Here only 4,028 feet and a warmer damp air. Well, we tried it yesterday; had to leave city of Mexico at 6.15 A.M., our hotel at 5.30 cold, no breakfast; had to travel till ten or nearly before we could get even a decent cup of coffee, at junction of road to Vera Cruz and Puebla, and after rising to 8,333 feet in getting out of the Valley of Mexico; but at 1 P.M., at Esperanza, in the Tierra Frias, had a capital dinner, and met train from Vera Cruz. Here pine-trees on the hills all round us, two species. Soon begins the descent and a complete change of air, the other side all dry and horrid dust, making our catarrh worse than ever; now the moisture from the Gulf of Mexico makes all green; the road by skillful engineering pitches down 4,000 feet to this, the greater part of the descent all in eight or nine miles of straight line as the bird flies. In all the Valley of Mexico and to the north of it really nothing in blossom yet, all so dry, except Senecio salignus, if I rightly remember the name, a shrub of 1-4 feet, just becoming golden with blossoms. But the moment we began the descent all was flowery, two species of Baccharis, Eupatoria, Erigeron mucronatum (so much cultivated under the false name of Vittadenia triloba), Lœseliæ species, Arbutus, (Xalapensis) in bud, and many things of which we shall know more when we return over the route.... Very comfortable hotel here. Botteri[132] left an élêve here who knows something of botany, but lives out of reach on a hacienda. We found a garden combined with a small coffee plantation. The proprietor thereof, speaking a little French, has filled his ground with a lot of things that will stand here. It is just in _medias res_, two hours below Tierra Frias, two above (or at Cordoba, only seventeen miles, but 2,000 feet lower) true tropical. Papaya fruits here, also Persea gratissima, etc. And the oranges are delicious. I have passed the whole morning with the garden man, while Farlow went up a small steep mountain, and brought back various things. We shall drive this afternoon to the Cascade of Rincon Grande (cascades are most rare in Mexico).

The air here suits us; shall try to leave our coughs here and at Cordoba below.

On the way here had views of Popocatapetl and the more beautiful and diversified Iztaccihuatl from the sides, and wound round the base of Mt. Orizaba. A true Mexican town this. Mrs. Gray enjoying sights from the window; will be able to drive out this afternoon, though the clouds are sinking too much and mist gathering, a great contrast to the city of Mexico.

P. M.--We went, but saw the falls (very picturesque) in a wet mist, and for botany got a lot of subtropical Mexican plants, the like of which I never saw growing before: among Compositæ, Lagascea (large heads), Tree Vernonias of the Scorpioides set, Calea, Andromachia, etc., etc.

CORDOBA, March 2, 1885.

... To continue. On Saturday, a fine and sunny morning, Farlow and I drove off for the Cascade of Barrio Nuevo, almost as beautiful as the other, and had a long morning in clambering and collecting. In the grounds on the way are planted trees of a Bombacea, in flower before the leaf, probably Pachira. The peak of Orizaba shows as a narrow streak of white over a near mountain, from the windows of our room; but by going half a mile east the whole comes out splendidly.

Sunday morning we were comparatively quiet, but at 3.50 P.M. we were off for Cordoba, less than an hour distant by rail, and 2,000 feet lower. A queer little town, with only a poor, truly Mexican inn, a set of rooms in the single story, all round a patio, into which the country diligence drives, and on rear side the stables back against the rooms, as Farlow found to his discomfort, only a thin wall between his room and the horse’s mangers. Tile floors, cot-beds, but clean, and the food certainly better than was to be expected.

Fine view of Orizaba. An American, Dr. Russell, here, whom I looked up. And he took us to an American German, Mr. Fink, who collects Orchids, etc., commercially. He took us to a garden, and we were going to the river bank and ravine, but, though out of season, rain set in, and we came home rather wet.

I fear our afternoon excursion may be lost, but it now looks like clearing. The way from Orizaba here is magnificent, for mountains, railroad-engineering, and culture vegetation. I hope we can get into some wild tropical vegetation, but uncertain; can stay here only to-morrow at most. We are cut off from news of all the world; little could we get in Mexico city; less since....

You would be amused, as I have known you to be in Italy, at my knack of explaining myself by gesture, and so getting on....

LATHROP, CALIFORNIA, May 1, 1885.

We have only this morning left Rancho Chico and have set our faces eastward. Waiting for our train I improve the rare bit of leisure to write a line.

First of all, we are both well. No cough, however obstinate, could abide this charming climate. And having no excuse for further stay we enter upon the “beginning of the end” of a holiday which now only lacks ten days of three months. What a pity to turn our backs on all the fruits we see growing around us, having enjoyed only the cherries, which are just coming in. Well, we have a basket of them, as big as plums, and so good! to solace the first days of the desert part of our journey. We shall have desert enough on the way home, as we cross Arizona and New Mexico by the Atlantic and Pacific railway, through the northern part of those Territories (having come out by the southern), a country quite new to us. How often we have wished for you and Lady Hooker!

When and whence did I write you last? I think from Los Angeles and before our trip to San Diego.

Instead of a short journey by sea (which my wife detests) we made a long circumbendibus by rail to the southernmost town in California; declined an invitation to go over the border into Mexican California; was, in fact, too unwell to do anything in the field, and so, finding the coast too cool and damp, returned, stopping two nights with Parish and wife, at their little ranch at San Bernardino, in a dry and warm region, a charming valley girt with high mountains, on the eastern side still snow-topped,--indeed they are so most of the summer. Back thence to Los Angeles we soon went, down to the port San Pedro, and took steamer for Santa Barbara, the very paradise of California in the eyes of its inhabitants, and indeed of most others. Our cruise of only eight hours on the Pacific was pleasant, and most of it in daylight.

Arriving after dark, we found, to our surprise, the mayor of the little town on the wharf with a carriage for our party (wife, Farlow, and self), who drove us to the fine watering-place kind of hotel, and on being shown at once to our rooms we found them all alight and embowered in roses, in variety and superbness such as you never saw the beat of, not to speak of Bougainvilleas, Tacsonias, and passion-flowers, Cape-bulbs in variety, etc., etc., and a full assortment of the wild flowers of the season. Mrs. Gray was fairly taken off her feet. During the ten or eleven days we stayed, there were few in which we were not taken on drives, the most pleasant and various. The views, even from our windows, of sea and mountain and green hills (for California is now verdant, except where Eschscholtzia and Bahias and Layia, etc., and Lupines turn it golden or blue) were just enchanting; and on leaving we were by good management allowed to pay our hotel bill.... Had you been of the party I believe the good people would have come out with oxen and garlands, and would hardly have been restrained.

Here we were driven out fifteen miles to one of the great ranches,--a visit of two nights and a day,--that of Mr. Cooper, a very refined family; the whole ranch flanked on the windward sides by eucalyptus groves, apricots, almond, peach-trees, etc., by the dozens of acres; but the produce on which the enthusiastic owner has set his heart is that of the olive, and he makes the best of olive oil, and in a large way. Hollister’s ranch is still larger, miles long every way; both reach from mountain-top to sea, and have fine drives up cañons, in these fine oaks and plane-trees, occasionally an Acer macrophyllum and an Alder. Avoiding the sea, which gives a short route, we reached San Francisco by a lovely drive, in a hired wagon, over a pass in the Santa Inez Mountains to the coast (south) at Ventura, and so up the broad and long Santa Clara Valley to Newhall, on the Southern Pacific railway, not very far above Los Angeles (two days’ drive, most pleasant), then by rail overnight and to this place to breakfast, and on to San Francisco.

We stopped this time at the Lick House, where we had, European-wise, a room, not quite so good as we had at the Palace Hotel eight years ago, and fed at the restaurant, very nice and reasonable, when we were not visiting or invited out, which was most of the time. So it was not expensive, our room (parlor, bedroom shutting off, and a bathroom) costing only about 12 shillings for us both. Harkness looks the same, but older; is absorbed in fungology. Here again we were made much of for twelve days, most busy ones. General McDowell, who you remember dined us at the “Palace,” is ill; we saw him twice, and he has since so failed that we daily expect to hear of the end.

May 4. In Farlie’s Chalet hotel in the Grand Cañon of the Colorado.

Dr. Brigham, you remember, who took us to the Chinese theatre, is now married, and has three children by a bright wife, with a rich father, and a handsome house, above Presidio,--a fine site, and filled with fine things from all countries, and such a rose-garden; gave us a handsome dinner. Alvord and wife (president now of Bank of California), noble people, did wonders for us, and a dinner and drives. A lunch over at the university; and another by General (commanding the Western Department in place of McDowell, and in the choice house the latter built) and Mrs. Pope (she an old acquaintance); then we went over to San Rafael, a night with the Barbers, and next day a drive up behind Mount Tamalpais to the cañon reservoir of water-works, and saw, at length (having failed on all former visits), that huge Madroña (Arbutus Menziesii), like one of those great and wide-spreading oaks you used to admire. Next day to Monterey, which we saw nothing of on that hurried visit eight years ago, when our single day was sacrificed to Hayden’s insane desire to see a coal mine on a bare hill! Now there are eighteen miles of good drive around all Point Pinos and through it, and Cupressus macrocarpa on the seaside verge, noble and picturesque old trees, and no lack of young ones, a little back, and grand sea and shore views.

On the other side of the town, in a grove of great live oaks and Pinus insignis mixed, made into a beautiful park and park gardens, with a separate railway station in the grounds, is the crack hotel of the Western coast, the work of the Pacific Railway Company, which has also bought and appended the whole of the pine grove, five or six miles long and two or three wide, thus preserving Pinus insignis and the cypress, the latter much needing it.

Mr. and Mrs. Alvord, knowing our visit was to be, had telegraphed for best rooms, and joined us unexpectedly; took us on the long drive the next day, with four fine horses.... They showed us no end of kind attention.

At length we got off for a visit to Chico (leaving Farlow to apologize at Santa Cruz, etc.), a quicker way than before, a steam-ferry across Suisin Bay helping. And there we had a nice time indeed, from Saturday evening to Friday morning, every day, drives and picnics, and botanizing, and feeding on (besides strawberries) such cherries, just coming in in acres of cherry-orchards, the only fruits yet in season. That big fig-tree, in the branches of which I used to hide and feast, or rather cram, is bigger than ever, but the figs green, to my sorrow. And we cannot wait for them. General Bidwell[133] and wife have aged little in the eight years, are as good as ever, full of all noble and good works, as well as of generous hospitality; have taken wonderfully to botany; remember you most affectionately and long for a real visit. His great ambition is to make drives, good roads, through the ranch, for pleasure as well as use; he has now over a hundred miles of them. That big oak[134] is finer than ever; not a dead branch.

Well, off at length; at Lathrop joined our eastward train at evening; up the San Joaquin valley all night, and had early morning for the wonderful Tahachapi Pass. Breakfast at Mohave. (I must send you a railroad map.) There took the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad, over the sandy desert to the Great Colorado at supper, to Peach Spring station at two A.M., and next morning in an easy “buckboard wagon” twenty-two miles and 4,000 feet descent into this wonderful cañon, a piece of it, which its explorer, Major Powell, has made famous.

This afternoon and evening we are to get up and back, and on in the night and morning to Flagstaff, and the ancient cliff dwellings.

IN THE CARS, KANSAS CITY, May 8, 1885.

Let me finish up these mems. We have now only a run of eleven hours to St. Louis, where we stay three or four days with Dr. Engelmann (Jr.), and then home.

The cañon trip well repaid the journey and its rough accessories. Some of the views are of those depicted by Powell. We find that Tylor and Moseley were here last year. As the man whom we had introductions to at Flagstaff was absent for a day or two, though we found he had left substitutes, and as we wanted to get home as soon as we could, we gave up the visit to the cave and cliff dwellings. I dare say the models in clay, made at Washington, are as good as the originals. So we came on, one and a half nights and two days, and to-night we shall sleep in beds at St. Louis. We bear this sort of travel quite well. From Mohave to the Colorado is very sandy and complete desert, descending eastward many hundred feet. Near Mohave lots of tree yuccas, looking very like those in northern part of Mexico. From the Colorado to Peach Spring we passed in the dark, but had risen to about 6,000 feet, and we kept on an elevation of 4,000 to nearly 8,000 feet all across the rest of Arizona and New Mexico, the higher parts wooded with conifers, that is, Pinus ponderosa of the Rocky Mountains form and Juniperus. At Las Vegas, New Mexico, we laid over one train, to rest and visit the Hot Springs; no great to see, except a spick and span new hotel, too fine for the place, and some very hot water.

Well, this trip, which will nearly round out to three and a half months, has been long and enjoyable indeed.

At St. Louis will be letters, perhaps one from you.

Ever yours, A. GRAY.

Part of yesterday and last night was down along the Arkansas, the reverse of our journey eight years ago. Country much settled up.

CAMBRIDGE, August 26, 1885.

... Charles Wright is dead, at seventy-three and a half; had been suffering of heart-disease, went out to his barn, was missed as the evening drew on, was found dead. So they go, one by one....

The summer is almost gone,--one hardly knows how,--but, then, we have a longer and finer autumn than you have in England.

The five hundred copies which I printed in 1878 are gone. And, as I have to print new copies, I take the opportunity to correct on the stereotype plates when I can,--a great lot of wrong references to volume, page, plates,--that is, such as we have found out. What a bother they are, and how impossible to make correct in the first place, and to keep so through the printer’s hands! Then there are lots of important corrections to make, and new species and genera galore.

So,--in an evil moment, you will say--I set about a supplement to this new issue,--also of the other part. For, as I have now brought out in the two parts all the Gamopetalæ, and as I begin to doubt if I shall hold out to accomplish much more, I thought it best to leave behind at least these in good state. But it is no small job. And this, with the great amount of herbarium work that goes along with it, or beside it, just uses up the summer; for I dare guess it will keep me occupied all September....

The last news of you is a letter from your dear wife to mine,--giving such a pleasant picture of the two boys, and of your enjoyment of them. You say you are quite well, and Lady Hooker much the same,--which is comforting. But you are naturally growing older, like myself. I tire sooner than I used to do, and have not so sure a touch nor so good a memory. The daily grind we both find more wearing....

We should like to come over to you once more,--but it seems less and less practicable; unless I become actually unfit for work, and then I shall not be worth seeing....

Your affectionate old friend, A. GRAY.

Old, indeed; the president of the Naturæ Curiosorum wrote me on August 3 that I have been one of the _curious_ for fifty years.

* * * * *

Dr. Gray wrote a notice of Charles Wright for the “American Journal of Science,” in which he says that “Charles Wright was born at Wethersfield, Connecticut; graduated at Yale in 1835. Had an early love for botany, which may have taken him to the South as a teacher in Mississippi, whence he went to Texas, joining the early immigration, and occupied himself botanizing and surveying, and then again in teaching. He accompanied various expeditions, and no name is more largely commemorated in the botany of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona than Charles Wright. It is an acanthaceous genus of this district, of his own discovery, that bears the name of Carlowrightia. Surely no botanist ever better earned such scientific remembrance by entire devotion, acute observation, severe exertion, and perseverance under hardship and privation.” He was engaged later for several years “in his prolific exploration of Cuba.”

“Mr. Wright was a person of low stature and well-knit frame, hardy rather than strong, scrupulously temperate, a man of simple ways, always modest and unpretending, but direct and downright in expression, most amiable, trusty, and religious. He accomplished a great amount of useful and excellent work for botany in the pure and simple love of it; and his memory is held in honorable and grateful remembrance by his surviving associates.”[135]

TO JOHN H. REDFIELD.

CAMBRIDGE, November 3, 1885.

MY DEAR REDFIELD,--I was interested in your Corema Con.

I have a remark to make on the last sentence of it; I would ask, How could the plant have an introduction following the glacial period? And where could it have come from?

Of course my idea is that it existed at the higher north before the glacial period--that is my fad.

But one sees that this is one of a few plants that may be appealed to in behalf of an Atlantis theory,--as coming across the Atlantic, making this Corema a derivation from C. alba, of Portugal, or of _its_ ancestor. But the Atlantic is thought to be too deep for an Atlantis; and we do not need it much.

What induces me to refer to your paragraph is to ask whether your “following the glacial period,” that is, recent introduction, means in your thought that our species is a direct descendant of Corema alba, which by some chance got wafted across the Atlantic.

That is the most probable notion, next to my theory.

For consider, we know the genus only on these two opposite shores.

Perhaps--so far as I know, there is no more C. alba in the Old World than C. Conradii in the New. And if it were in New England that the former occurs, we could say that the Old World received the genus from the New--via the Gulf Stream.

November 6.

... I start farther back than the retreat of the glaciers. I suppose that the common ancestor of both Coremas was in the high north before the glacial period, and that the two, in their limited but dissociated habitats, are what is left after such vicissitudes!

In that view it does not matter how long New England coast was under water. Our plant and its companions were then further south or west.

Yours ever, A. GRAY.

On the approach of Dr. Gray’s seventy-fifth birthday it was suggested among the younger botanists that some tribute of love and respect should be presented to him. Accordingly a letter was sent to all botanists whose addresses could be obtained within the very limited time. A silver vase was decided upon, and designs furnished, which were most happily and beautifully carried out. The description, copied from the “Botanical Gazette,” gives its size and decorations.

“It is about eleven inches high exclusive of the ebony pedestal, which is surrounded by a hoop of hammered silver, bearing the inscription ‘1810, November eighteenth, 1885--Asa Gray--in token of the universal esteem of American Botanists.’

“The decoration of one side is Graya polygaloides, surrounded by Aquilegia Canadensis, Centaurea Americana, Jeffersonia diphylla, Rudbeckia speciosa, and Mitchella repens. On the other Shortia galacifolia, Lilium Grayi, Aster Bigelovii, Solidago serotina, and Epigæa repens. The lower part of the handles runs into a cluster of Dionæa leaves, which clasps the body of the vase, and their upper parts are covered with Notholæna Grayi. Adlumia cirrhosa trails over the whole background. The entire surface is oxidized, which gives greater relief to the decorations.”

Greetings in the form of cards and letters, sent by those who gave the vase, were placed on a silver salver accompanying the gift, with the inscription, “Bearing the greetings of one hundred and eighty botanists of North America to Asa Gray on his seventy-fifth birthday, November 18th, 1885.”

Dr. Gray was exceedingly touched and delighted, as well as overwhelmed with surprise. And the day, with pleasant calls and congratulations from friends and neighbors, gifts of flowers with warm and kindly notes, was made a memorable one indeed.

His response to the senders of the vase was printed and sent to all who could be reached.

HERBARIUM OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY, CAMBRIDGE, MASS., November 19, 1885.

HANG _To J. C. Arthur, C. R. Barnes, J. M. Coulter, Committee, and to the numerous Botanical Brotherhood represented by them_:

As I am quite unable to convey to you in words any adequate idea of the gratification I received on the morning of the 18th inst., from the wealth of congratulations and expressions of esteem and affection, which welcomed my seventy-fifth birthday, I can do no more than render to each and all my heartiest thanks. Among fellow-botanists, more pleasantly connected than in any other pursuit by mutual giving and receiving, some recognition of a rather uncommon anniversary might naturally be expected. But this full flow of benediction, from the whole length and breadth of the land whose flora is a common study and a common delight, was as unexpected as it is touching and memorable. Equally so is the exquisite vase which accompanied the messages of congratulation and is to commemorate them, and upon which not a few of the flowers associated with may name or with my special studies are so deftly wrought by art, that of them one may almost say, “The art itself is nature.”

The gift is gratefully received, and it will preserve the memory to those who come after us of a day made by you, dear brethren and sisters, a very happy one to

Yours affectionately, ASA GRAY.

TO S. M. J.

November 19, 1885.

We meant our day to have been most quiet, and I completely and J. largely were taken by surprise. So we had to send for two or three neighbors, especially to see the vase.

J. will bring it in to you, no doubt, for she is very proud of it. The lines I have already written have taken all the strength out of my right arm, but not all the love out of my heart, of which a good share is yours.

TO W. M. CANBY.

CAMBRIDGE, November 19, 1885.

MY DEAR CANBY,--Many thanks for your felicitations. There is much I want to write, and to say what a surprise we had, and how perfect the vase is. But my arm is worn out with note-writing.

Yours affectionately, ASA GRAY.

Two poems and a poetical epigram came among the rest!

TO SIR EDWARD FRY.

CAMBRIDGE, January 31, 1886.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--I am a laggard correspondent, I fear. Here are your two most friendly and interesting letters, as far back as November, one of which crossed, and one which announced, the reception of my long letter which gave a sketch of our journeyings which began almost a year ago. For we are now already in the middle of another winter. I doubt if we shall flee from this one, although it has shown some severity. In the first place, we may thankfully say that neither Mrs. Gray nor I can say that we require it; and I cannot bear to lose the time: I seem to need the more of this as the stock diminishes; for, somehow, I cannot get as much done in a day as I used to do. Moreover, it is no good running away from winter unless you can go far. For our southern borders have been unusually wintry, and they want our guards and preparations against cold.... We were glad enough to get back to our well and equably warmed house, where, indeed, we are most comfortable.

You called my attention, I believe, to Professor Allen’s book on the “Development of Christian Doctrine.” I take shame to myself that I did not procure and read it. But I know its lines, and read some part of it before it was in the book, and, of course, I like it much.

I am going, in a few days, to send you a little book, with similar bearings, which I read in the articles of which it is made up. I think you will find much of it interesting.

Bishop Temple’s “Bampton Lectures” seemed to me very good as far as it went, but hardly came up to expectation.

I saw something of Canon Farrar when here. He pleased well, and I think was well pleased; and personally he was very pleasing and lovable.

I wish more of the English Churchmen would visit us, and give more time especially to the study of their own branch of the church in the United States,--a very thriving one. I think they might learn much that would be helpful and hopeful,--difficult as it may be to apply the experience and the ways of one country to another.

I have seen, but not read, Mr. Forbes’s “Travels in Eastern Archipelago.” Those who have read it here say it is very interesting. We have a great lot of his dried plants from Sumatra and Java, unnamed, which at odd hours I am arranging for the herbarium. I hope that in his new journey he will manage to make better specimens. But, as he is primarily an entomologist, this can hardly be expected. But, if I rightly understand, he goes out now with a good backing and probably better conveniences for collecting than he could have had before.

We have been, and still are, much interested in English politics and election excitements. You are having very anxious times, indeed. What a pity that some one party, that is, one of the two great parties, is not strong enough, and homogeneous enough, to command the situation for the time being, and to deal independently of Parnell, or, indeed, of Chamberlain....

We Americans are wonderfully peaceful--our only real questions now pending are financial, and those not yet treated as they ought to be, on party lines. We have an awful silver craze; but we hope to arrest it before it comes to the worst, though sense and argument are at present ineffectual.

We have a comfortable trust in the principle that “Providence specially protects from harm the drunken, the crazy, and the United States of America.”

I see our friend Professor Thayer now and then. He is well and flourishing. Mrs. Gray and I are very well indeed, and we send our most cordial good wishes to you all.

Very sincerely yours, ASA GRAY.

TO J. D. HOOKER.

CAMBRIDGE, March 9, 1886.

When I read A. de Candolle’s notice of Boissier, I thought it was “charming.” Anyhow, it brought back to me the charming memory of a very lovable man. I dare say neither De Candolle nor I has done justice to Boissier’s work. I could only touch and go,--make a picture that would just sketch the kind of man he was.

... Yes, I have got on Ranunculaceæ, and have done up to and through Ranunculus, minus the Batrachium set, of which happily we have few in North America, that we know of. But having done some while ago the Gamopetalæ of Pringle’s interesting North Mexican collection, I am now switched off to the same in a hurried collection made by Dr. Palmer, in an unvisited part of Chihuahua, in which very much is new. One after another those Mocino[136] and Sessé plants turn up. Also those of Wislizenus, whom the Mexicans for a time interned on the flanks of the Sierra Madre.

We are bound to know the botany of the parts of Mexico on our frontier, and so must even do the work. Pringle goes back there directly, with increased facilities, and will give special attention to the points of territory which I regard as most hopeful.

Trelease,[137] our most hopeful young botanist,--established at St. Louis,--is here for a part of the winter, to edit a collection of the scattered botanical publications of Engelmann which Shaw pays for--or at least pays for to a large extent. He would have the plates and figures, and that will double the cost and the sum Shaw offered to provide. We may have to sell some of the edition in order to recoup the charges....

Yes, you hit a blot. I can see to all my own books, such as the “Synoptical Flora.” But, somehow, I cannot restrain the publishers from altering the date of their title-pages when they print off a new issue from the stereotype plates....

What do I call an alpine plant? Why, one that has its habitat above the limit of trees--mainly--though it may run down lower along streams. But in a dry region, where forest has no fair chance, we might need to mend the definition.

Upon your paper, I got a few notes--offhand, by references.

I premise that in New England we have two places where several alpine plants are stranded at lower levels than they ought, peculiar conditions of configuration and shelter having preserved them, while the exposed higher grounds have lost them. They are Willoughby Mountain and the Notch of Mt. Mansfield, Vermont.

As to your III. Of the whole list of alpine plants of Oregon and northward and not of California, I can put my hand upon only two that are yet known in California, viz., Armania verna and Vaccinium cæspitosum, which comes in its var. arbuscula only.

There is a great lack of alpine arctic plants in California. First, because there is not much place for them now; secondly, because there have been such terrible and vast volcanic deposits--lava and ashes--that they must have been all killed out.

But for all these matters we shall one of these days have fuller and surer data--after my day. Well, I must stop....

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

CAMBRIDGE, June 29, 1886.

MY DEAR DE CANDOLLE,--Your letter and inclosure of the 15th inst. gave me much pleasure. Not only had I a natural curiosity to know more of Coulter,[138] but also I find it important to know his routes in Mexico and California.

At Los Angeles, last year, I fell in with one of the “old settlers” who knew him, and who accompanied him on that expedition into the Arizona desert on the lower Colorado. Mr. Ball will ascertain and let me know other particulars of the man, and the date of his death, which probably occurred not long after that last letter to you, from Paris.

In various ways I am convinced that I am on the verge of superannuation. Still I work on; and now, dividing the orders with Mr. Watson (who, though not young, is eight or ten years my junior), we are working away at the Polypetalæ of the “Synoptical Flora of North America,” with considerable heat and hope. But it is slow work!

Tuckerman, our lichenologist, has gone before us! I shall in a few days send you a copy of the memorial of him which I contributed to the Council report of the American Academy of Sciences and am having reprinted in the “American Journal of Science” for July.

My wife is fairly well.... She is always busy; and we both enjoy life with a zest, being in all respects very happily situated, particularly in having plenty to do.

Let us hope that you may still be able to give us better accounts of Madame de Candolle and of yourself; and believe me to be always,

Yours affectionately, ASA GRAY.

TO J. D. DANA.

BOTANIC GARDEN, CAMBRIDGE, MASS., September 20, 1886.

MY DEAR DANA,--Well! “the books” have just come.

I suppose you are in no hurry for notices of them, and would prefer short ones....

I rather like to do such things incog., as in the “Nation,” in which I sometimes take a shot at this or that.

I and wife are well,--very.

Had a week in Old Oneida, which still looks natural. I am grinding away at “Flora,” and probably shall be found so doing when I am called for.

Very well! I have a most comfortable and happy old age. Wishing you the same,

Yours ever, A. GRAY.

TO J. D. HOOKER.

CAMBRIDGE, September 15, 1886.

... Has Ball returned to England? If so, please tell him that he promised to look up in Dublin, and give from his own knowledge, some details of Coulter’s life. Alphonse de Candolle has sent me copies of what letters he has, and they enable me to trace Coulter’s movements and whereabouts, which is helpful.

Old Goldie,[139] your father’s correspondent lang syne, died only this summer, very old.

My last bit of work was upon our Portulacaceæ for my “Flora.” The genera are thin. It is as much as one can do to keep up Montia (though if that fails Claytonia should go to it rather than the contrary, by right,--but convenience would call for the contrary), also Spraguea.

I have been having a holiday. A fortnight ago my wife and I set out; made a visit to my natal soil, in the centre of the State of New York, in Oneida County; had a gathering of the surviving members--most of them--of the family, of which I am the senior,--two widowed sisters (one a sister-in-law), there resident, and an older one who came with her husband from Michigan; my oldest brother and family, who have the paternal homestead; the unmarried sister, who passes all her winters with us; children and some grandchildren. One brother, a lawyer in New York, and residing near by in New Jersey, with wife and two boys, did not come. Another absent nephew is in California, well settled there.

It is a pretty country, the upper valley of the Mohawk and of tributary streams from the south, which interlock with tributaries of the Susquehanna, at a height of 1,000 to 1,500 feet above tide-water, beautiful rolling hills and valleys, fertile and well cultivated, more like much of rural England than anything else you saw over here. We wished you and Lady Hooker could have been with us in our drives. The summer air is just delightful, soft and fresh.

On our return we struck off and visited my brother Joe and family, in the environs of New York, and so came home much refreshed--though, indeed, I hardly felt the need of a holiday.

Sargent has just started for a trip to the southern part of the mountains of North Carolina,--a region we are fond of and long to show you.

Now I am going to pitch into Malvaceæ. I am quite alone. Goodale took off Sereno Watson with him, on a slow steamer to Amsterdam; will run for a fortnight or so over nearer parts of the Continent, and Watson will look in at Kew. He was much worn down, and the rest and change will be good for him. I have filled my sheet with this gossip.

* * * * *

It was during this visit that Dr. Gray, when the family gathered one morning for breakfast, had disappeared. He came in smiling when the meal was half over, and in answer to the anxious question where he had been, said, “Oh, I have been to say to Mrs. Rogers that I forgave her for getting above me in the spelling-class.”

CAMBRIDGE, October 31, 1886.

DEAR HOOKER,--Thanks for a nice long letter from Bournemouth, September 27. Thanks, too, for the hope--though rather dim--that you and wife may come over to us in the spring. Before winter is over we must arrange some programme; for we four must meet again somehow and somewhere, while in the land of the living. But how is a problem.

... I see how difficult it must be for you to get away as far as to us. Our obstacle to any amount of strolling away is mainly the fear that if I interrupt my steady work on the “Flora of North America,” I may not get back to it again, or have the present zeal and ability for prosecuting it.

On the other hand, if I and my wife do not get some playdays now, while we can enjoy them, the time will soon come when we shall have to say that we have no pleasure in them. Therefore we are in sore straits.... If really you cannot come, then we will brave out the winter here, as we did last winter and are none the worse; then we will seriously consider whether Mahomet shall go to the mountain, which will not come to Mahomet.

I grind away at “Flora,” but, like the mills of the gods, I grind slowly, as becomes my age,--moreover, to continue the likeness, I grind too “exceedingly fine,” being too finical for speed, pottering over so many things that need looking into, and which I have not the discretion to let alone. Consequently the grist of each day’s work is pitiably small in proportion to the labor expended on it. I am now at Malvaceæ, which I once enjoyed setting to rights, and of which the North American species have got badly muddled since I had to do with them.

If Sereno Watson--who should be back again in twenty days--will only go on with the Cruciferæ, which he has meddled with a deal, and then do the Caryophyllaceæ, which are in like case, we may by March 1st have all done up to the Leguminosæ.

We learn to-day, through a pamphlet sent by Miss Horner, that Bunbury is dead--in June last....

Your “Primer”--new edition--has not come yet. Do not forget it. And then, as my manner is, I will see if I can find fault with it. Same with Bentham’s “Hand-book,” new edition....

I do not wonder that you are happy and contented. We should so like to see father, mother, and children in their encampment at Sunningdale. May plenty of sunshine be theirs!

Ball has sent me early sheets of his book. I must find time to go through its pages.

The L.’s abroad, except the two girls (who are to winter at San Remo) are now en voyage homeward. William, their father, has been painted by Holl. He is a good subject. Saw your sister B. (and kind Lombe); she writes a charming letter to my wife; seems to hold her own wonderfully.

CAMBRIDGE, November 22, 1886.

Well, I have got safely through my seventy-sixth birthday, which gives a sort of assurance. I have always observed that if I live to November 18, I live the year round!

You are working at Euphorbs, etc.; I at Malvaceæ, in which I find a good deal to do for the species, and something for the betterment of genera....

TO SIR EDWARD FRY.

CAMBRIDGE, November 13, 1886.

MY GOOD FRIEND,--Let me turn for a moment to our quarter-millennial celebration of the foundation of our university, though you in Europe may count our antiquity as very modern. It was an affair of three days, culminating on Monday last, and was altogether very pleasant. You will like to know that among the honorary degrees given, was one to Professor Allen, of the Episcopal Theological School here, in recognition of the merits of his “Continuity of Religious Thought,” which work, I am glad to remember, you much liked. The Mother Cambridge sent to us the master of St. John’s, Dr. Taylor, and Professor Creighton, of Immanuel College, to which the founders and first professors of Harvard belonged. Mrs. Creighton came with him, and we found them pleasant people. I suppose Lowell’s oration, Holmes’s poem, and the doings in general will be in print before very long, and I shall not forget to send you a copy.

We have been away from Cambridge very little this last summer and autumn, only on very short visits, or one rather longer one to my birthplace in the central portion of New York, where we had a family gathering.

There is a lull just now in your political situation. I certainly at your last election should have gone against Gladstone! How so many of my countrymen--I mean thoughtful people--approve of homerule, i.e., of semi-secession, I hardly understand. But local government as to local affairs is our strength, and is what we are brought up to. Also, our safety is in that the land--the agricultural land--is so largely owned by the tiller....

We should like to see old friends in England once more in the flesh, and the feeling grows so that I may feign a scientific necessity, and we may, if we live and thrive, cross over to you next summer. At least we dream of it, though it may never come to pass.

TO J. D. HOOKER.

CAMBRIDGE, January 18, 1887.

MY DEAR HOOKER,--Glad to see the “Botanical Magazine” figure of Nymphæa flava †.6917.

There is something not quite right in the history as you give it. Leitner was the botanist who showed the plant to Audubon, and gave it the name which Audubon cites, and he died--was killed by the Florida Indians--“half a century ago.” He was the “a naturalist” you refer to.

The whole history and the mode of growth, stolons, etc., has been repeatedly published here in the journals, etc. See Watson’s “Index” Supplement, etc. Not that this is any matter, even about poor Leitner.

CAMBRIDGE, January 25, 1887.

... Yes, it has seemed to me clear that you could not cross the Atlantic at present. And so it logically follows that we must.

I had been coming to this conclusion, and only the day before your letter arrived my good wife and I had put our heads together and concluded that, if nothing occurred meanwhile to prevent, we would cross over, say in April. It is time we set about it, if we are ever to do it; and several things seem to indicate that this is a more favorable time than we can expect later.

As this will be “positively Dr. Gray’s last appearance on your shores,” we must make the most of it. Shall we have a Continental jaunt together, or shall you be too much tied to home?

Meanwhile I must work hard and steadily....

As you “weed out” surplus of herbarium Kew, keep them for me. When I come I will take care of them. It is (as usual) good of you to think of us. You have done so for so long a time that it is only “second nature”--very good nature too.

Williamson, plant-fossil, long ago begged us to come to British Association at Manchester, and be his guests. If I do, what think you of my preparing a paper for Botanical Section; and will you join me in it? two venerables--_anglice_ old fogies--on Nomenclature and Citations.

There are some points I should like to argue out and explain; to put on record, though it may be of no use. Not that one wants to get up a discussion in such a body--that would never do....

CAMBRIDGE, February 22.

Thank you for sending me your edition of Bentham’s “Handbook,” which looks well in its more condensed shape, and in which I dare say you have put a good deal of conscientious work. But it seems to me that Reeve & Company give it poor type and paper.

I am putting through a rehash of my “Lessons in Botany,”[140] more condensed, yet fuller, and with a new name. This, with the companion book, which I must live to do over, _Deo favente_, is the principal thing for bread, and I need it for an endowment to keep up the herbarium here, after my time.

Well,--don’t speak of it aloud,--we have secured our passages for April 7, and if I can get present work off my hands in time, we may be on your soil soon after Easter.

You may imagine me very busy, indeed.

Yours affectionately, A. GRAY.

Dr. Gray, with Mrs. Gray, landed in England, April 18, and went from Liverpool to stay at Sunningdale with Sir Joseph and Lady Hooker, where a quiet, restful week was most pleasantly passed. He went to London the first of May for a few days, meeting again old friends, dining with them, and dropping in for calls, “to report himself,” as he said. He did a little work at Kew, going back and forth; then crossed to Paris, finding at the Jardin des Plantes what he had especially wanted to see, Lamarck’s herbarium, which had been acquired since he was last there. It completed satisfactorily his studies in Asters, as he had now seen everything of the genus to be found in herbaria of importance.

A journey in Normandy with Sir J. D. Hooker had been planned for May, but Sir Joseph was unable to leave England, so Dr. Gray arranged to go to Vienna. He greatly enjoyed the railroad journey from Bâle, in May, the fruit-trees white with blossoms about Lake Zurich, then the wilder mountain scenery, and Salzburg, all bringing back the memories of his first European journey forty-eight years before.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

HERBARIUM, KEW, April 23, 1887.

MY DEAR DE CANDOLLE,--You will be a little surprised at the sudden transfer of Mrs. Gray and myself to England; but I wanted a vacation and one more bit of pleasant travel with Mrs. Gray while we are both alive and capable of enjoying it. Whether I shall look in upon you at Geneva is doubtful, but it may be, even for a moment. We never expect to have repeated the pleasant week at Geneva of the spring of 1881.

We expect to go to Paris early in May, but subsequent movements are uncertain.

Always, dear De Candolle, affectionately yours,

ASA GRAY.

TO ----.

May 15, 1887.

I think the journey from Bâle, in Switzerland, to Salzburg was wonderfully fine and a great success, and that May is a good time to do it, while there is plenty of snow in the mountains. Lake Wallenstadt showed to great advantage. And I had no idea that the pass of the Arlberg, from Feldkirk to Innspruck, was so high or so very fine. I believe it is the highest railway pass across the Alps. I was quite unprepared (which was all the better) for the exquisite and wild, and in parts grand, scenery of the next day’s journey through the heart of Lower Tyrol and the Salzburg Salzkammergut, by a slower train, a roundabout road making more than twice the direct distance from Innspruck to Salzburg, through the Zillerthal and over a fairly high pass on to the upper part of the Salzach, and down it through some wild cañons into the plain, from nine A.M. till five, of choicest scenery. The great castle, so picturesquely placed in the Lichtenstein (plain), is Schloss-Werden. Rainy day at Salzburg, or should have had noble views. If the weather had been good, I think we would have driven from Salzburg to Ischl, and then come by the Traunsee to Linz. But after all, from my remembrance, it would hardly have come up to what we had already seen. And though it was a rainy day for the Danube, we did see everything pretty well, and most comfortably, in the ladies’ cabin of the steamer, with windows all round the three sides, and most of the time the whole to ourselves, or with only one quiet lady, who evidently cared nothing for the views. J. says I was bobbing all the time from one side to the other. I was looking out for the views which I had when going up the Danube forty-eight years ago. J. thinks it not equal to the Rhine, but there is rather more of it, or scattered over more space.

TO SIR J. D. HOOKER.

HÔTEL BEAU RIVAGE, GENEVA, May 24, 1887.

I do believe we shall have to return to America to thaw out. Here we arrive in Geneva this morning, full of memories of delightful summer, ten days earlier than this in 1881, to find snow down even to foothills of the Jura and on Mont Salève; it came two days ago, and the air, though clear, is very chilly, which is not to my liking.

Vienna was much better, excepting our last day, which had a cold and high wind, and our night journey to Munich was cold and comfortless, in spite of the best appliances.

I have nothing new to tell you of Vienna, where we made out our full week, quite enjoyingly.