from grain, “something used in cooking.” The word was early read and spelled with a u or v instead of n, and the corruption was adopted in English.
GRAY, ASA (1810–1888), American botanist, was born at
Paris, Oneida county, N.Y., on the 18th of November 1810.
He was the son of a farmer, and received no formal education
except at the Fairfield (N.Y.) academy and the Fairfield medical
school. From Dr James Hadley, the professor of chemistry and
materia medica he obtained his first instruction in science (1825–1826).
In the spring of 1827 he first began to collect and identify
plants. His formal education, such as it was, ended in February
1831, when he took the degree of M.D. His first contribution to
descriptive botany appeared in 1835, and thereafter an uninterrupted
series of contributions to systematic botany flowed
from his pen for fifty-three years. In 1836 his first botanical
text-book appeared under the title Elements of Botany, followed
in 1839 by his Botanical Text-Book for Colleges, Schools, and
Private Students which developed into his Structural Botany.
He published later First Lessons in Botany and Vegetable Physiology
(1857); How Plants Grow (1858); Field, Forest, and Garden
Botany (1869); 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, the first edition of which appeared
in 1847. This manual has passed through a large number of
editions, is clear, accurate and compact to an extraordinary
degree, and within its geographical limits is an indispensable
book for the student of American botany.
Throughout his life Gray was a diligent writer of reviews of books on natural history subjects. Often these reviews were elaborate essays, for which the books served merely as texts; often they were clear and just summaries of extensive works; sometimes they were sharply critical, though never ill-natured or unfair; always they were interesting, lively and of literary as well as scientific excellence. 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 forty years thereafter Gray gave up a large part of his time to the preparation of his Synoptical Flora (1878). He lived at the period when the flora of North America was being discovered, described and systematized; and his enthusiastic labours in this fresh field placed him at the head of American botanists and on a level with the most famous botanists of the world. In 1856 he published a paper on the distribution of plants under the title Statistics of the Flora of the Northern United States; and this paper was followed in 1859 by a memoir on the botany of Japan and its relations to that of North America, a paper of which Sir J. D. Hooker said that “in point of originality and far-reaching results [it] was its author’s opus magnum.” It was Gray’s study of plant distribution which led to his intimate correspondence with Charles Darwin during the years in which Darwin was elaborating the doctrines that later became known as Darwinism. From 1855 to 1875 Gray was both a keen critic and a sympathetic exponent of the Darwinian principles. 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 taught that “the most puzzling things of all to the old-school teleologists are the principia of the Darwinian.” He openly avowed his conviction that the present species are not special creations, but rather derived from previously existing species; and he made his avowal with frank courage, when this truth was scarcely recognized by any naturalists, and when to the clerical mind evolution meant atheism.
In 1842 Gray accepted the Fisher professorship of natural history in Harvard University. On his accession to this chair the university had no herbarium, no botanical library, few plants of any value, and but a small garden, which for lack of money had never been well stocked or well arranged. He soon brought together, chiefly by widespread exchanges, a valuable herbarium and library, and arranged the garden; and thereafter the development of these botanical resources was part of his regular labours. The herbarium soon became the largest and most valuable in America, and on account of the numerous type specimens it contains it is likely to remain a collection of national importance. Nothing of what Gray did for the botanical department of the university has been lost; on the contrary, his labours were so well directed that everything he originated and developed has been enlarged, improved and placed on stable foundations. He himself made large contributions to the establishment by giving it all his own specimens, many books and no little money, and by his will he gave it the royalties on his books. During his long connexion with the university he brought up two generations of botanists and he always took a strong personal interest in the researches and the personal prospects of the young men who had studied under him. His scientific life was mainly spent in the herbarium and garden in Cambridge; 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 lived to a good age—long enough, indeed, to receive from learned societies at home and abroad abundant evidence of their profound respect for his attainments and services. He died at Cambridge, Mass., on the 30th of January 1888.
His Letters (1893) were edited by his wife; and his Scientific Papers (1888) by C. S. Sargent. (C. W. E.)
GRAY, DAVID (1838–1861), Scottish poet, the son of a hand-loom weaver, was born at Merkland, near Glasgow, on the 29th of January 1838. His parents resolved to educate him for the
church, and through their self-denial and his own exertions as a
pupil teacher and private tutor he was able to complete a course
of four sessions at the university of Glasgow. He began to write
poetry for The Glasgow Citizen and began his idyll on the Luggie,
the little stream that ran through Merkland. His most intimate
companion at this time was Robert Buchanan, the poet; and in
May 1860 the two agreed to proceed to London, with the idea
of finding literary employment. Shortly after his arrival in
London Gray introduced himself to Monckton Milnes, afterwards
Lord Houghton, with whom he had previously corresponded.
Lord Houghton tried to persuade him to return to
Scotland, but Gray insisted on staying in London. He was
unsuccessful in his efforts to place Gray’s poem, “The Luggie,”
in The Cornhill Magazine, but gave him some light literary work.
He also showed him great kindness when a cold which had seized
him assumed the serious form of consumption, and sent him to
Torquay; but as the disease made rapid progress, an irresistible
longing seized Gray to return to Merkland, where he arrived in
January 1861, and died on the 3rd of December following, having
the day before had the gratification of seeing a printed specimen
copy of his poem “The Luggie,” published eventually by the
exertions of Sydney Dobell. He was buried in the Auld Aisle
Churchyard, Kirkintilloch, where in 1865 a monument was
erected by “friends far and near” to his memory.
“The Luggie,” the principal poem of Gray, is a kind of reverie in which the scenes and events of his childhood and his early aspirations are mingled with the music of the stream which he celebrates. The series of sonnets, “In the Shadows,” was composed during the latter part of his illness. Most of his poems necessarily bear traces of immaturity, and lines may frequently be found in them which are mere echoes from Thomson, Wordsworth or Tennyson, but they possess, nevertheless, distinct individuality, and show a real appreciation of natural beauty.
The Luggie and other Poems, with an introduction by R. Monckton Milnes, and a brief memoir by James Hedderwick, was published in 1862; and a new and enlarged edition of Gray’s Poetical Works, edited by Henry Glassford Bell, appeared in 1874. See also David Gray and other Essays, by Robert Buchanan (1868), and the same writer’s poem on David Gray, in Idyls and Legends of Inverburn.
GRAY, ELISHA (1835–1901), American electrician, was born
in Barnesville, Belmont county, Ohio, on the 2nd of August
1835. He worked as a carpenter and in a machine shop, reading
