GRAY, ASA (I 81 o-1888) , American botanist, was born it Paris, Oneida county (N.Y.), on Nov. 18, 181o. From Dr. James Hadley, professor of chemistry and materia medica, he obtained his first instruction in science (1825-26). In the spring of 1827 he first began to collect and identify plants. His formal education, such as it was, ended in Feb. 1831, when he graduated in medicine from the Fairfield Medical school. In 1836 his first botanical text book appeared under the title Elements of Botany, followed in 1839 by Botanical Text-Book for Colleges, Schools and Private Students, which developed into his Structural Botany. He pub lished later First Lessons in Botany and Vegetable Physiology (1857) ; How Plants Grow (1858) ; Field, Forest and Garden Botany (1869) ; and How Plants Behave (1872). These books served the purpose of developing popular interest in botanical studies. His most important work, however, was his Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States, within its geographical limits an indispensable book for the student of American botany, the first edition of which appeared in 1848.
Throughout his life Gray was a diligent writer of book reviews on natural history, and his reviews themselves often became treatises of literary and scientific value. The greater part of Gray's strictly scientific labour was devoted to a Flora of North America, the plan of which originated with his early teacher and associate, John Torrey of New York. The second volume of Torrey and Gray's Flora was completed in 1843 ; but for 4o years thereafter Gray gave up a large part of his time to the preparation of his Synoptical Flora (1878). Gray's enthusiastic labours in the then new field of discovery and systematization of North American flora placed him at the head of American botanists and on a level with the most famous botanists of the world. In 1856 he published Statistics of the Flora of the Northern United States. This paper was followed in 1859 by a memoir on the botany of Japan and its relations to that of North America, which Sir J. D. Hooker called "in point of originality and far-reaching results its author's opus magnum." From 1855 to 1875 Gray was both a keen critic and a sym pathetic exponent of the Darwinian principles, having been for years in close correspondence with Darwin. His religious views were those of the evangelical bodies in the Protestant Church; so that, when Darwinism was attacked as equivalent to atheism, he was in position to answer effectively the unfounded allegation that it was fatal to the doctrine of design. He openly avowed his conviction that the present species were not special creations, but rather were derived from previously existing species; and he made his avowal with frank courage, when to the clerical mind evolu tion meant atheism.
In 1842 Gray accepted the Fisher professorship of natural his tory in Harvard university. He soon brought together, chiefly by widespread exchanges, a herbarium which became the largest and most valuable in America, and a library where previously there had been none, and arranged the small garden already existing. Thereafter the development of these botanical resources was part of his regular labours. Everything he originated and developed has been enlarged, improved, and placed on stable foundations. He himself made large contributions to the establishment. His scien tific life was mainly spent in the herbarium and garden in Cam bridge; but his labours there were relieved by numerous journeys to different parts of the United States and to Europe, all of which contributed to his work on the Synoptical Flora. He received from learned societies at home and abroad abundant evidence of their profound respect for his attainments and services. He died in Cambridge (Mass.), on Jan. 3o, 1888.
His Letters (1893) were edited by his wife ; and his Scientific Papers 0888) by C. S. Sargent. (C. W. E.)