Letters of Asa Gray; Vol. 1

by Asa Gray

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.