All the various collections made by the expedition of Commodore Charles Wilkes, during the years 1838-1842, save those collected upon our own Pacific coast, were placed in Dr. Gray's hands for elaboration. The collection comprised plants from widely-separated, insular, and continental floras, and the work was one which a less able botanist would have hesitated to undertake. How well the task was performed, two elegant volumes, which are better known in Europe than they are with us, stand as abundant evidence.
In this brief résumé of his labors, in systematic botany, we can but merely allude to a host of opuscula, or minor contributions—minor only in reference to their size, but of the highest value in their relations to science. These exist in the form of contributions to scientific journals, and to the proceedings of societies or academies. Some are devoted to the clearing up a knotty point in physiology or in classification; some contain the revision of a whole family or genus; while others are devoted to the working up of smaller collections than those comprised in the memoirs already referred to. Nor must we overlook the contributions which for years have appeared in almost every number of the American Journal of Science and Arts, of which Dr. Gray has long been one of the editors. In these notes the American reader has been kept au courant with all the best work of European botanists.
Such is an imperfect enumeration of our first botanist's contributions to the science; but there remains a greater than these to mention—his elementary works. However we value his labors in the higher departments of science, we render him our gratitude when we look upon what he has done to open a welcome door, through which not only the student, but the reader of average intelligence, and even the child, can enter the heretofore exclusive domain of Botany. Those who now take up the study of botany can have little idea of the difficulties that beset us of a generation or so ago. Where we groped and guessed, doubtful whether we were on the right path or the wrong one, the way is now made clear. The old rubbish is brushed aside, and the student now can walk in pleasant paths, guided by the clearest light of modern science. It is his untiring efforts to popularize science (in the true sense of the word) that has given Dr. Gray a lasting claim upon all who are interested in education and culture. As early as 1836, he published the "Elements of Botany," which grew into the "Structural and Systematic Botany," or "Botanical Text-Book," of the present day, a work that, through its various editions, has kept pace with discovery, and at each issue has stood as the best exponent of the state of vegetable physiology in any language.
In 1848 appeared the "Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States," in which our Flora was presented in a compact volume, with concise descriptions. This admirable work has passed through several editions, each one an improvement upon its predecessor, and it now stands unequalled as a local Flora.
