Letters of Asa Gray; Vol. 2

by Asa Gray

“For the very great honor of being called upon to second the motion for a vote of thanks to your illustrious president, I am mainly indebted to that deference which is naturally accorded to advancing years; a deference which sometimes, as in the present case, takes one unawares.

“In looking over the list of Corresponding Members of the British Association, I find myself, much to my surprise, nearly, if not quite, the oldest survivor.

“I recognize, therefore, a certain fitness, on this score, in the call upon me to be the spokesman of those, your brethren from other lands, who have been invited to this auspicious gathering, and to the privilege of listening to the very thoughtful, well-timed, and most instructive address of your president.

“As guests, we desire, Mr. Mayor, heartily to thank the City of Manchester and the officers of the Association for inviting us; we wish to thank you, Sir Henry, for the gratification your address has afforded us.

“Convened at Manchester, and coming myself by way of Liverpool, I would say, personally, that there are two names which memory calls up from the distant past, with unusual distinctness, both names familiar to this audience, and well-known over the world, but which now rise to my mind in a very significant way. For I am old enough to have taken my earliest lessons in chemistry just at the time when the atomic theory of Dalton was propounded and was taught in the text-books as the latest new thing in science. Some years earlier, Washington Irving, in his Sketch-book, had hallowed to our youthful minds the name of Roscoe, making it the type of all that was liberal, wise, and gracious. And when I came to know something of botany, I found that this exemplar as well as patron of good learning had, by his illustrations of monandrian plants, taken rank among the patres conscripti of the botany of that day.

“The name so highly honored then we now honor in the grandson. And I am confident that I express the sentiments of your foreign guests whom I represent, when I simply copy the words of your president in 1842, now reproduced in the opening paragraph of the address of the president of 1887, transferring, as we fitly may, the application from the earlier to the later Manchester chemist.

“‘Manchester is still the residence of one whose name is uttered with respect wherever science is cultivated, who is here to-night to enjoy the honors due to a long career of persevering devotion to knowledge.’

“I cannot continue the quotation without material change. ‘That increase of years to him has been but increase of wisdom,’ may, indeed be said of Roscoe no less than of Dalton; but we are happy to know that we are now contemplating not the diminished strength of the close, but the manly vigor of the midcourse of a distinguished career. Long and prosperously may it go on from strength to strength.

“In general, praise of the address which we have had the pleasure of hearing would not be particularly becoming from one whose chemistry nearly ended as well as began with the simple atomic theory of Dalton. But there is one topic which I may properly speak of, standing as I do as a representative of those favored individuals which your programme, for lack of a better distinguishing word, calls ‘foreigners.’ I refer to the urgently expressed ‘hope that this meeting may be the commencement of an international scientific organization.’ For this we thank you, Mr. President, most heartily. This is, indeed, a consummation devoutly to be wished, and confidently to be hoped for by all of us, especially by those for whom I am speaking.

“Not only we Americans, who are of British descent, and who never forget that blood is thicker than water, but as well our Continental associates on this platform, of the various strains of blood which, interfused, have produced this English race and fitted it for its noble issues,—we, each and all, I repeat, accept this name of ‘foreigners’ only in the conventional sense which the imperfection of the language imposes. In the forum of science we ignore it altogether. One purpose unifies and animates every scientific mind with ‘one divine intent,’ and that by no means the ‘far-off intent’ of which the poet sings, but one very near and pervading. So we took to heart the closing words of your president’s most pertinent and timely address. Indeed, we had taken them to heart in anticipation, and so have come to this meeting, one hundred strong or more (in place of the ordinary score) fully bent upon making this Manchester meeting international.