Who is Miss Grant, who says she knows you both? She sculps, I believe.
Ever yours,
A. Gray.
There was much to do on getting home and settling down again, and many things were planned for the winter’s work. Dr. Gray particularly wished to write some accounts of the old botanists he had seen in his earlier visits, being stirred thereto by Reichenbach[144] of Hamburg, and by the stories he told one evening at Dr. Oliver’s, at Kew, when all agreed it was a pity some of these characteristic things should not go on record. He took up work on the “Flora,” wrote a review of “Darwin’s Life and Letters,” and had a busy time before him.
Professor Baird, director of the Smithsonian, and an old friend, had died during the summer, and Dr. Gray, from his long connection with the institution, was much interested in the appointment of his successor. He went on in November to Washington to a special meeting of the Regents, when Professor Langley was appointed; wrote from Washington of the wonderful amount he had done in one day, and hurried back; liking always, if he could, to surprise those at home by being somewhat earlier than he had promised. He began the Annual Necrology for the “American Journal of Science.” He was already at work on the Vitaceæ for the “Flora.”
He went in to Boston for the family Thanksgiving dinner, though there had seemed some threatening of a cold, but he pronounced himself perfectly comfortable. Still there was a quick breathing and some listlessness, so that he was nursed a little on Friday; though he saw Miss Murfree, who had been brought by Mrs. Houghton to ask him to settle some question about a flower of the Southern Alleghanies, and he entered into the matter with all his old life and eagerness. That evening he had two slight chills, so that the doctor was summoned the next day, and fearing some chest trouble, as he seemed threatened with one of his bronchial attacks, advised him to keep in bed. On Sunday his pulse and temperature had improved so much that he was allowed to get up and go down stairs at noon, the doctor congratulating him on the success of the treatment. There seemed a weakness of the right hand, which, however, passed away, and he wrote that evening the letter to Dr. Britton, which follows, and when remonstrated with for making the exertion, said “it was important and must be written.”
Sunday Evening, November 27, 1887.
Dear Dr. Britton,—I wish to call your attention either in a personal way or in the “Bulletin,” if preferred, to a name coined by you on the 223d page of this year’s “Bulletin.”
“Conioselinum bipinnatum (Walter, Fl. Car. under Apium), Britton, Selinum Canadense, Michx., 1803.”
I want to liberate my mind by insisting that the process adopted violates the rules of nomenclature by giving a superfluous name to a plant, and also that in all reasonable probability your name is an incorrect one.
Take the second point first. On glancing at the “Flora of North America,” of Torrey and Gray, 1, 619, where the name Conioselinum Canadense legitimately came in, you will notice that the name Apium bipinnatum, Walt., is not cited as a synonym; also that the synonymous name of Cnidium Canadense, Spreng., is cited with “excl. Syn.” This Apium bipinnatum, Walt., you might gather was one referred to. Sufficient reason for the exclusion by Dr. Torrey might have been that Michaux’s plant is a cold northern one, which nobody would expect in or near Walter’s ground—the low and low middle part of Carolina. Besides, the preface of that “Flora” states that Walter’s herbarium had meanwhile been inspected by Dr. Torrey’s colleague, who may now add that the Apium bipinnatum is not there. So that the name you adopt rests wholly upon a mere guess of Sprengel’s, copied by De Candolle, dropped on good grounds by Torrey, but inadvertently reproduced in Watson’s “Index,” copying De Candolle. I suppose you would not contend that a wholly unauthenticated and dubious (I might say, doubtless mistaken) name, under a wrong genus, should supersede by its specific half a well-authenticated and legitimate name. And I am sure that you will not take it amiss when I say that very long experience has made it clear to me that this business of determining rightful names is not so simple and mechanical as to younger botanists it seems to be, but is very full of pitfalls. I trust it is no personal feeling which suggests the advice that it is better to leave such rectifications for monographs and comprehensive works, or at least to make quite sure of the ground.