[Illustration: Photo of Asa Gray (signed)]
LETTERS OF ASA GRAY
EDITED BY
JANE LORING GRAY
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I.
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1894
Copyright, 1893,
BY JANE LORING GRAY.
_All rights reserved._
NOTE.
It has been my aim, in collecting and arranging the “Letters” from Dr.
Gray’s large correspondence, to show, as far as possible in his own
words, his life and his occupation. The greater part of the immense mass
of letters he wrote was necessarily purely scientific, uninteresting
except to the person addressed; so that many of those published are
merely fragments, and very few are given completely. I have made no
attempt to estimate his scientific or critical labors, for they are
sufficiently before the world in various printed works; but something of
the personality of the man and his many interests may be learned from
these familiar letters and from even the slight notes.
Dr. Gray began an Autobiography, but went no further than to give a
brief sketch of his early life. This fragment is placed, with some notes
illustrative of the early conditions in which his youth was passed, at
the beginning of the work.
It is owing to the kind assistance of many friends that the
Autobiography and Letters are thus presented; among whom should be
especially mentioned Professors C. S. Sargent and Charles L. Jackson,
Dr. W. G. Farlow, Mr. J. H. Redfield, and Mr. Horace E. Scudder.
J. L. GRAY.
BOTANIC GARDEN, CAMBRIDGE,
_July 1, 1893_.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 1810-1843 1
II. EARLY UNDERTAKINGS. 1831-1838 29
III. FIRST JOURNEY IN EUROPE. 1838-1839 85
IV. A DECADE OF WORK AT HOME. 1840-1850 272
NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS. The frontispiece portrait of Dr. Gray is a
photogravure from a photograph taken in 1867. The portrait facing page
286 is from a daguerreotype taken about 1841. The view of the Botanic
Garden House, facing page 358, is from a drawing by Isaac Sprague.
LETTERS OF ASA GRAY.
CHAPTER I.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
1810-1843.
My great-great-grandfather, John Gray, with his family, among which was
Robert Gray, supposed to be one of his sons, emigrated from Londonderry,
Ireland, to Worcester, Mass., being part of a Scotch-Irish colony.[1]
The farm they took up was on the north side of what is now Lincoln
Street.
Robert Gray, my great-grandfather, died in Worcester, January 16, 1766.
He married Sarah Wiley[2] about the year 1729. They had ten children;
the eighth was Moses Wiley Gray, my grandfather, born in Worcester,
December 31, 1745. About the year 1769, he married Sally Miller,
daughter of Samuel and Elisabeth (Hammond) Miller, of Worcester, and
removed to Templeton, Mass. About 1787 he removed to Grafton, Vermont,
where his wife died in 1793. In 1794 he removed to Oneida County, N. Y.,
and settled in the Sauquoit Valley,[3] where he died from injuries
received from the fall of a tree, May 8, 1803.
My father, Moses Gray, was the youngest of the (eight?) children of his
mother. There were three half-brothers and a half-sister by a second
wife, born in Oneida County, none of whom survived my father. He was
born in Templeton, Mass., February 26, 1786.[4] He was therefore in his
eighteenth year when his father died. He used to say that he had only
six weeks of schooling; whether before or after his father’s death I am
ignorant. But soon after that event he was apprenticed to a tanner and
currier (Mr. Gier) at Sauquoit, in whose employment he must have been
for a part of the time after he came of age, for I was born in a little
house which had been a shoe-shop on the premises of the tan-yard.
The fact of being born supposes a maternal ancestry. July 30, 1809, my
father married Roxana Howard. She was born in Longmeadow, Mass., March
15, 1789; was a daughter of Joseph Howard, who was born in Pomfret,
Conn., March 8, 1766, and of Submit (Luce) Howard, born at Somers,
Conn., April 3, 1767;[5] and he was the grandson of John Howard of
Ipswich,[6] Mass., and of Elisabeth Smith, of the same town. He was the
descendant of Thomas Howard, who, with his wife and children, came from
Aylesford (or Maidstone), Kent, in the year 1634.
My mother came with her parents to Oneida County and the Sauquoit Valley
when only a few years old.[7] Her father there joined a company which
set up an iron-forge. One of the early pieces of work of its trip-hammer
was to forge off three of my maternal grandfather’s fingers. This
appears to have qualified him to be the cleric in charge, or manager, of
the office and store of the Paris Furnace Company, which established a
small iron-smelting furnace on the Sauquoit, two and a half miles above
the village of Sauquoit, in a deep and narrow valley which had the name
of Paris Furnace Hollow, now called Clayville, the furnace long since
having disappeared, a natural consequence of the exhaustion of the
charcoal furnished by the woods of the surrounding hills. My earliest
recollections are of Paris Furnace Hollow, for not long after I was
born, as aforesaid, in Sauquoit, on the eastern or Methodist side of the
creek, on the 18th of November, 1810, my father and mother removed to
Paris Furnace with me, their first-born, and set up a small tannery
there. Of this I retain some vivid recollections, especially those
connected with the first use to which I was put, the driving round the
ring of the old horse which turned the bark-mill, and the supplying the
said mill with its grist of bark,--a lonely and monotonous
occupation.[8] I was sent to the district school near by when three
years old; and I either remember some of my performances of that or the
next year, or have been told them in such way as to leave the matter
doubtful.[9] My earliest distinct recollections of school are of
spelling-matches, in which at six or seven years I was a champion.[10]
There was a year or two of early boyhood in which I was sent to a small
“select” or private school, taught at Sauquoit, by the son of the pastor
of the parish; a year or two following, in which I was in my maternal
grandfather’s family, near by, as a sort of office-boy; and at the age
of twelve, or near it, I was sent off to the Clinton Grammar School,
nine miles away, where I was drilled after a fashion in the rudiments of
Latin and Greek for two years, excepting the three summer months, when
I was taken home to assist in the corn and hayfield. For my father,
buying up, little by little, lands which had been cleared for charcoal,
had become a farmer in a small way, an occupation to which he was most
inclined. So about these times he sold out the tannery and bought a
small farm nearer to Sauquoit, mainly of the land which my maternal
grandfather had settled on, including the house in which he had married
my mother. To it he removed, and there resided until he bought out an
adjacent small farm in addition, with an old house very pleasantly
situated, which he rebuilt and lived in until after I had attained my
majority. But soon after that he bought a small farm close to the
Sauquoit village on the western or Presbyterian side, hard by the
meeting-house the family had always attended. There my father indulged
his special fancy by rebuilding another old house, and the place, after
his death, and, much later, after that of my mother, fell to my eldest
brother, who still possesses it.[11]
I am not sure, but I think it was after two years of the Clinton Grammar
School that I was transferred to Fairfield Academy.[12] Fairfield,
Herkimer County, lies high on the hills, between the West and East
Canada creeks, seven miles north of Little Falls. I went there first in
October, 1825, the date I fix by that of the completion of the Erie
Canal. For that autumn, I think in November, I walked one afternoon,
along with some other students, down to Little Falls to see there the
arrival of the canal-boat which bore the canal-commissioners, with the
governor, De Witt Clinton at their head, on their ceremonious voyage
from Buffalo to New York city. It reached Little Falls near sunset, and
we walked to Fairfield that evening. The reason for my being sent to
Fairfield Academy was that the principal of the academy was Charles
Avery, uncle of my companion from infancy, Eli Avery, of our town, who
died two years ago, who had been educated by the help of Eli’s father,
Colonel Avery, one of the owners of Paris furnace. Charles Avery several
years later took the professorship of chemistry, etc., at Hamilton
College, lived to over ninety, I think, and through all his later years
seemed to be very proud of having been my teacher. I cannot say that I
owe much to him, even for teaching me mathematics, which was his forte.
My capital memory allowed me to “get my lessons” easily, and that
sufficed; and I had none of the sharp drilling and testing which I
needed. He lingers in my memory in another way. He was sharp at turning
a penny in various ways; among them, he for the first year and more
jobbed the board of his nephew Eli and myself, who were chums, paying
for it in cooking-stoves and the like from Paris furnace, in which
through his brother he had an interest, and boarding us round, from one
house to another (we had our room in the academy buildings) until the
stove which cooked our dinner was paid for. Sometimes our fare was good
enough; but one poor widow, who took us in her turn, fed us so much upon
boiled salt cod, not always of the sweetest, that the sight of that dish
still calls up ancient memories not altogether agreeable. I think it was
not at that time, but at a somewhat later date, and with less excuse,
that we mended our diet upon one occasion, one winter’s night, by
carrying off the principal’s best fowls from the roost, skinning them,
as the most expeditious and neatest way, and broiling them in our room
as the pièce de résistance, for they were tough, in a little supper we
got up.
I here recall a favor which Mr. Avery did me. A year or two after I had
taken my M. D., my dear old friend Professor Hadley, of Fairfield
Medical College, who had been filling the place at Hamilton College pro
tem., made me a candidate for the professorship there of chemistry, with
geology and natural science. But my old teacher, Mr. Avery, an alumnus
of the college, entered the lists and carried the day. I wonder if I
should have rusted out there if I had got the place.
I must go back to say something of my omnivorous reading, which was,
after all, the larger part of my education. I was a reader almost from
my cradle, and I read everything I could lay hands on. There was no
great choice in my early boyhood. But there was a little subscription
library at Sauquoit, the stockholders of which met four times a year,
distributed the books by auction to the highest bidder (maximum,
perhaps, ten or twelve cents) to have and to hold for three months; or
if there was no competition each took what he chose. Rather slow
circulation this; but in the three months the books were thoroughly
read. History I rather took to, but especially voyages and travels were
my delight. There were no plays, not even Shakespeare in the library,
but a sprinkling of novels. My novel-reading, up to the time when I was
sent to school at Clinton, was confined, I think, to Miss Porter’s
“Children of the Abbey” and “Thaddeus of Warsaw”--the latter a
soul-stirring production, of which I can recall a good deal; of the
former nothing distinctly. One Sunday afternoon, of the first winter I
was at Clinton, I went into the public room of one of the two village
inns, where half a dozen of the villagers were assembled; and one was
reading aloud “Quentin Durward,” which had just appeared in an American
(Philadelphia) reprint. This was my introduction to the Waverley novels.
The next summer, when at home for farm work, I found “Rob Roy” in the
little library I have mentioned, took it out and read it with interest.
In the autumn, when I went back to school, some college (Hamilton
College) students were boarding at the house where I boarded and lodged.
One of them, seeing my avidity for books, introduced me to the librarian
of the Phœnix Society of the college, which had a library strong in
novels, which I was allowed, one by one, to take home for reading. I
suppose that I read them every one.[13]
It was intended that I should go to college, and my father could have
put me through without serious inconvenience; but he was buying land
about this time, and he persuaded me to give up that idea and to go at
once at the study of medicine, which I did, in the autumn of 1826,
beginning with the session of 1826-27 in the medical college (of the
western district), then a flourishing country medical school at
Fairfield. I had already attended its courses in chemistry, given by
Professor James Hadley (father of Professor James Hadley of Yale
College, then a lad), my earliest scientific adviser and most excellent
friend. I had a passion for mineralogy in those days, as well as for
chemistry. The spring and summer of 1827 I passed in the office of one
of the village doctors of Sauquoit, Dr. Priest, and on the opening of
the autumn session returned to the medical school at Fairfield. That
year, in the course of the winter, I picked up and read the article
“Botany” in Brewster’s “Edinburgh Encyclopædia,” a poor thing, no doubt,
but it interested me much. I bought Eaton’s “Manual of Botany,”[15]
pored over its pages, and waited for spring. Before the spring opened,
the short college session being over, I became a medical student, after
the country fashion, in the office of Dr. John F. Trowbridge of
Bridgewater, Oneida County, nine miles south of my paternal home;
continued there for three years, except during the college sessions,
where I attended four annual courses before taking my degree of M. D. at
the close of the session of 1829-30.[16] The fact will appear, which I
did not reveal at the time, that I took this degree six or seven months
(I passed my examination, indeed, eight or nine months) before I had
attained the legal age of twenty-one. But I looked older, and was in
fact such an old stager in the school that no one thought of asking if I
was of age. That degree gives me my place high enough on the Harvard
University list to entitle me to a free dinner at Commencement.
I have mentioned my interest in botany as beginning in the winter and
out of all reach either of a greenhouse or of a potted plant. But in the
spring, I think that of 1828, I sallied forth one April day into the
bare woods, found an early specimen of a plant in flower, peeping
through dead leaves, brought it home, and with Eaton’s “Manual” without
much difficulty I ran it down to its name, Claytonia Virginica. (It was
really C. Caroliniana, but the two were not distinguished in that book.)
I was well pleased, and went on, collecting and examining all the
flowers I could lay hands on; and the rides over the country to visit
patients along with my preceptor, Dr. Trowbridge, gave good
opportunities. I began an herbarium of shockingly bad specimens. In
autumn, going back to Fairfield for the annual course of medical
lectures, I took specimens of those plants that puzzled me to Professor
Hadley, who had learned some botany of Dr. Ives of New Haven, and had
made a neat herbarium of the common New England and New York plants,
which I studied carefully that winter. At Professor Hadley’s suggestion
I opened a correspondence with Dr. Lewis C. Beck of Albany,[17] who was
the botanist of the region. The next summer I collected more easily and
critically. The summer after, I think, or probably the summer of 1830, I
had an opportunity to make a little run to New York, being sent by Dr.
Trowbridge to buy some medical books, driving in a one-horse wagon, with
my own horse, ninety miles to Albany, thence by steamer to New York over
night; one night there, and back next day by boat to Albany, and so
driving back to Bridgewater in company with a man of business who joined
me in this little expedition. I stopped to see Lewis C. Beck at Albany
Academy; there I first saw a grave-looking man who I was told was
Professor Henry, who had just been making a wonderful electro-magnet. I
had procured from Professor Hadley a letter of introduction to Dr.
Torrey, whose “Flora of the Northern United States,” vol. i., was our
greatest help so far as it went, and which on that journey I bought a
copy of. I took also a parcel of plants to be named. Finding my way to
Dr. Torrey’s house in Charlton Street with my parcel and letter, I had
the disappointment of finding that he was away at Williamstown,
Massachusetts, for the summer. It was not until the next winter that at
Fairfield I received a letter from Dr. Torrey, naming my plants, and
inviting the correspondence which continued thence to the end of his
life.
In addition to Dr. Hadley’s summer course of lectures on chemistry, Dr.
Lewis C. Beck used to come and deliver a short course of lectures on
botany. He gave this up the year in which I received my M. D., so
Professor Hadley invited me to come and give the course instead. The
course was given in five or six weeks, beginning in the latter part of
May. I prepared myself during the winter, gave this my first course of
lectures, cleared forty dollars by the operation, and devoted it to the
making of a tour to the western part of the State of New York, as far as
Niagara Falls, Buffalo, and Aurora,--a dozen or more miles off,--where I
visited an uncle, my mother’s brother, a well-to-do country merchant,
also a chum, Dr. Folwell, in Seneca County, high up between the two
lakes, where I passed a week or two; thence to Ithaca, and across the
country by a stage-coach back to Bridgewater. I hardly know what I did
the next autumn and winter, but in early spring a Mr. Edgerton, a pupil
of Amos Eaton, at Troy, the professor of natural sciences at the
flourishing school of Mr. Bartlett at Utica, died. I applied for the
vacancy, received the appointment, and for two or part of three years,
minus a long summer vacation, I taught chemistry, geology, mineralogy,
and botany, to boys, making with the boys very pleasant botanical
excursions through the country round. My first summer vacation, if I
rightly remember, was in cholera year, the disease being very fatal in
Utica. About the time it made its appearance in New York I started off
from Bridgewater, taking a little country stage-coach down the Unadilla
to Pennsylvania; visited Carbondale and made a collection of calamites
and fossil ferns; thence by stage-coach through the Wind Gap to Easton;
thence out to Bethlehem, where I passed a day with old Bishop
Schweinitz,[18] gave him a Carex which he said was new, but I told him
it was Carex livida, Wahl. (and I was right); back to Easton; thence up
to Sussex County, N. J., collecting minerals (Franklinite, etc.); thence
to adjacent Orange County, N. Y., collecting spinelles, etc., as well as
botanizing; thence down to New York early in September; there I met Dr.
Torrey for the first time, and we took a little expedition together down
to Tom’s River in the pine barrens, and back to New York in a
wood-sloop.
The next year, in the spring, Dr. Torrey went to Europe, sent to
purchase apparatus for the New York City University, then just
established. He engaged me to go that summer to collect plants in the
pine barrens of New Jersey, he to take the half of my collection, paying
what would be required to defray my very moderate expenses in the field.
I found afterwards that these plants went to B. D. Greene and his
brother Copley, then abroad and full of botany; and I have encountered
them, _i. e._, the specimens, in various places, especially in Herb. De
Candolle, as “Coll. Greene.” I got down, I hardly now know how, to
Tuckerton on the Jersey coast, botanized at Little Egg Harbor, Wading
River, Quaker Bridge, and Atsion. While at Quaker Bridge my loneliness
was cheered by the appearance of a fine-looking man, who came in a
chaise, looking after some particular insect. It proved to be Major Le
Conte.[19]
The next winter at Bartlett’s school. In the spring went north to
Watertown; visited Dr. Crawe, botanized on Black River, made
mineralogical excursions, and back to Utica via Sackett’s Harbor (lake
to Oswego, and canal to Utica). After the spring term of school there--I
think it was that year, but am uncertain--I took through the summer
Professor Hadley’s place at Hamilton College, Clinton; gave for him a
course of instruction in botany and mineralogy. This, I have reason to
think, was a ruse of my good friend, who wished me to succeed to that
professorship, which he was on the point of resigning. Fortunately,
Charles Avery, my old academic preceptor, became a candidate and secured
the election.
These years are a good deal mixed up, and I cannot settle their dates
nor the order of events. Only I know that the next autumn I got a
furlough from the school until toward the end of winter, that I might
accept Dr. Torrey’s invitation to be his assistant during his course of
chemical lectures in the Medical School, and at his house in the
herbarium, living with him, and receiving eighty dollars as pay. This I
can fix as the winter of 1833-34 or 1834-35. The first century of my
“North American Gramineæ and Cyperaceæ” was got out that winter, and it
bears the date of 1834.[20] In February or March I went up by stagecoach
from New York to Albany, thence to Bridgewater, and so to Utica, to do
my work at Bartlett’s school. That finished, made a second trip to the
northeast part of the State, collecting in botany and mineralogy with
Dr. Crawe, extending the tour to St. Lawrence County, where we found
fine fluor-spar and great but rough crystals of phosphate of lime,
idiocrase, etc. I wrote some account of these for the “American Journal
of Science,” the earliest of my many contributions to that journal.
Returning toward autumn to Bridgewater, I there received a letter from
Dr. Torrey, informing me that the prospects of the Medical College were
so poor that he could not longer afford to have my services as
assistant. Bartlett’s school I had resigned from on account of my
prospects in New York. And, in fact, the school was then going down, and
he [Bartlett] was transferred soon after to Poughkeepsie, where he
flourished anew for a time. I was in a rather bad way. But I determined
to go to New York, assisted Dr. Torrey as I could, got out the second
part of my “North American Gramineæ and Cyperaceæ.” I am not sure
whether I was in Dr. Torrey’s family or not, or for only a part of the
winter. But in the spring of 1835, I went up to my father’s house for
the summer, with some books, among them a copy of De Candolle’s
“Organographie” and “Théorie Elémentaire.” These or at least the former
came from Professor Lehmann,[21] of Hamburg, with whom for a year or two
I had corresponded and exchanged plants, or received books in exchange
for plants. I had made a still earlier exchange with Soleirol, a French
army surgeon, who had collected in Corsica. While at home I blocked out
and partly wrote my “Elements of Botany.” Returned to New York in the
autumn; went into cheap lodgings, arranged with Carvill & Company to
take my book. I think they gave one hundred and fifty dollars, which was
a great sum for me. We got it through the press that winter. John Carey
had then come down to New York, and was a great help to me in
proof-reading, and the little book was published in April or May, 1836.
I think it was in the autumn of 1836 that the Lyceum of Natural History,
New York, having with a great effort erected their hall, on Broadway
just below Prince Street, I was appointed curator; had a room for my
use, some light pay, proportioned to light duties, and this was my home
for a year or two. There I wrote my papers, “Remarks on the Structure
and Affinities of the Ceratophyllaceæ” (which dates February 20,
1837),--not a very wise production, and some of the observations are
incorrect; also the better paper, really rather good, “Melanthacearum
Americæ Septentrionalis Revisio,” published in 1837.
Dr. Torrey had planned the “Flora of North America,” but had not made
much solid progress in it. I, having time on my hands, took hold to work
up in a preliminary way some of the earlier orders for his use. This was
to pass the time for a while, for in the summer of 1836 I was appointed
botanist to a great South Pacific exploring expedition, which met with
all manner of delays in fitting out, changes in commanders, etc., until
finally, in the spring of 1838, Lieutenant Wilkes was appointed to the
command, the number and size of the vessels cut down, and the scientific
corps more or less diminished. The assistant botanist, William Rich, an
appointment of the Secretary of the Navy, was to be left out. I resigned
in his favor, having been about that time appointed professor of natural
history in the newly chartered University of Michigan. As I had thus far
done fully half the work, Dr. Torrey invited me to be joint author in
“Flora of North America.” The first part was printed and issued in July,
the second in October, 1838, at our joint expense, my share being
contributed from the pay I had been receiving while waiting orders as
botanist of the exploring expedition.
By this time we had come to see that we did not know enough of the
original sources to work up the North American flora properly, and as
Dr. Torrey could not get away from home, I was determined to get abroad
and consult some of the principal herbaria. On being appointed professor
in the University of Michigan, which had as yet no buildings, I made it
understood that I must have a year abroad. The trustees of the
university in this view gave me, in the autumn of 1838, a year’s leave
of absence, a salary for that year of fifteen hundred dollars, and put
into my hands five thousand dollars with which to lay a foundation for
their general library. I sailed early in November, 1838, in the
packet-ship Philadelphia, for Liverpool; went direct from Liverpool to
Glasgow; was guest of Dr. William J. Hooker till Christmas--his son,
Joseph D. Hooker, was then a medical student; went to Arlary, December
26-7, to visit Arnott; stayed till the day after New Year; thence to
Edinburgh for two or three days. Greville was the best botanist, but
Graham was the professor, Balfour then a young botanist there. Heard old
Monro, Wilson (Christopher North), Chalmers, Traill, Charles Bell, etc.,
lecture. On way south stopped at Melrose and Abbotsford; coach to
Newcastle, Durham (over Sunday), and through Manchester, where rail was
taken, to Birmingham and London. Took lodgings till some time in March.
Dr. Boott was of course my best friend there. But Hooker and Joseph came
up to London for a week. Hooker insisted on taking me in hand as of his
party, and so I was introduced to all his friends; took me to the Royal
Society, etc.; dined one day with Bentham, to whose house I often went,
and who gave me a full supply of letters to the botanists on the
Continent. I worked a good deal at the British Museum; Robert Brown was
very kind to me, and his assistant, J. J. Bennett, very useful, putting
me up to all the old collections and how to consult them. At Linnæan
Society, thanks to Boott, had every facility for the Linnæan herbarium.
Old Lambert too; he had the Hookers and myself at dinner, and gave me as
good opportunity as he could to consult the Pursh plants, etc., in his
herbarium, which, not long after, was scattered, but it was in his
dining-room, which was very much lumbered, and to be reached only at
certain hours. Lindley had me down for a day to his house at Turnham
Green, and a little dinner at the close. First visited Kew with the
Hookers; called on Francis Bauer, who lived in a house near the river;
found him at ninety making beautiful microscopic drawings to illustrate
the genera of ferns; and Hooker then arranged for their publication in
the well-known volume for which he furnished the text. Saw not rarely N.
B. Ward, who lived at Wellclose Square in Wapping, and whose cultivation
of plants in closed cases attracted much attention. Went with Ward one
day to dine with Menzies, then over ninety; he lived, with a
housekeeper, at Maida Vale, or somewhere beyond Kensington.
George P. Putnam, of the firm of Wiley & Putnam, was then resident in
London, and through him I managed the expenditure of the money placed in
my hands for the purchase of books for the University of Michigan, in a
manner that proved satisfactory.
There is still in my possession, but not in reach for ready reference, a
file of letters which I wrote home to the Torrey family while I was in
Europe. If I were to find them and refresh my memory by them, I should
make these notes quite too long. I will therefore trust to memory and
touch lightly here and there on my Continental journey. I think it was
early in March, 1839, that one morning I took passage on a small steamer
from London, Bentham coming to see me off, to Calais; thence diligence
for Paris. My lodgings, near the Luxembourg, were not far from the house
of P. Barker Webb, to whom I had introductions, and who was very useful
to me; he owned the herbarium of Desfontaines. At the Jardin des Plantes
were old Mirbel, who occupied himself only with vegetable anatomy,
Adrien Jussieu, with whom I corresponded as long as he lived,
Brongniart, Decaisne, then aide-naturaliste, and Spach, curator of the
herbarium. Jussieu had his father’s herbarium in his study. Besides
Michaux’s herbarium at the Jardin des Plantes, I had also to consult,
for a few things, the set taken by the actual writer of the “Flora,” L.
C. Richard. This I found at the house of his son Achille Richard,
botanical professor in the Medical School, living in the Medical Botanic
Garden, then occupying a piece of the Luxembourg grounds. The other
French botanists I recall were Dr. Montagne, the cryptogamist, a
pleasant man, Gaudichaud, whom I saw little of, Auguste St. Hilaire, who
I think spent only the winter in Paris. I had an introduction to
Benjamin Delessert, who lived in fine style in a hotel in the Rue
Montmartre. Lasègue, the librarian, acted as curator to the herbarium
(Guillemin had died not long before), which I found occasion to consult
only once. I should not forget Jacques Gay, with his large herbarium
very rich in European plants. I never dreamed then that so many of them
would find their way into our own herbarium. He lived close to the
Luxembourg Palace, then the palace of the House of Peers. Gay was the
secretary of the Marquis de Semonville, who was a high official there,
and so lived near by. He held a weekly reception for botanists, etc.,
and was a good soul. It was at the herbarium of the Jardin des Plantes
that I first made the acquaintance of a botanist of about my own age,
Edmond Boissier of Geneva, who was studying some of the plants of his
collections in Granada and other parts of Spain, soon after brought out
in his work on the “Flora of Granada,” etc.
I left Paris in early spring, by malle-poste to Lyons; passed a day with
Seringe; steamer to Avignon, diligence to Nîmes, and thence to
Montpellier, where I passed two or three days. Delile and Dunal were the
professors; saw Bentham’s mother and sister, then resident there.
Diligence to Marseilles, steamer to Genoa, Leghorn, a day at each; to
Civita Vecchia; a carriage to Rome, along with an English clergyman;
thence back same way to Leghorn, Pisa, Florence. Vetturino to Bologna,
Ferrara, Padua (Visiani at the garden), Venice; then steamer to Trieste;
a day with Biasoletto, including a botanical excursion, and Tommasini.
Fell in there with a young artist of New York, whose name I have
forgotten. We took places in the malle-poste together to Vienna, but
went on two days ahead to Adelsberg; visited the grotto on a fête day
when it was all lighted, and all the country people there in gala trim;
that night went on by malle-poste. At Vienna, Endlicher, and his
assistant Fenzl, but the latter laid up with lame knee. Never saw him
afterward, but we had a long correspondence. Steamer up the Danube to
Linz, tramway, etc., to the Gmunden See, and so to Ischl; climbed the
Zeimitz, all alone, picked my first Alpine flowers; traveled over night
to Salzburg, then to Munich; fine times with Martius and Zuccarini,
joined the celebration out in the country of Linnæus’ birthday,--but not
the 24th May; I think two or three weeks later. From Munich to Lindau on
Lake Constance; thence to Zurich; up the lake to Horgen; walked over to
Art; walked up the Rigi; descended the Rigi to take the boat up the
lake, missed it, got a man to put me across in Canton Unterwalden;
walked to Stanz, slept, walked next morning to Engelberg, and then over
the [Joch?] Pass, and down to Meyringen; next day to Interlaken and the
Staubbach, next over the Wengern Alp to Grindelwald, next over the Grand
Scheideck to valley of Hassli, up to the Grimsel, passed a Sunday in the
snow; walked down to the Rhone glacier and down to Brieg; thence partly
on foot, partly char-à-banc, to Martigny; made excursion to the Col de
Balme to get a good view of Mont Blanc; back to Martigny, down to
Villeneuve, and steamer to Geneva. I reached there, I think, July 4;
worked there ten days or so, very sharp; De Candolle, father and son,
and Reuter[22] the curator; saw again Boissier. Leaving boat at
Lausanne, diligence to Freiburg, Berne, Bâle. Got across country, I
hardly remember how, to Tübingen, Stuttgart, Heidelberg, Frankfort;
thence to Leipzig; made excursion to Dresden, then to Halle, where was
Schlechtendal, and where I looked over old Schkuhr’s originals of his
Carex plates; thence through Wittenberg to Potsdam and Berlin; worked
diligently a week in herbarium. Willdenow, Klotzsch the curator; saw old
Link, Kunth, and Ehrenberg. Diligence to Hamburg, where was Lehmann, one
of my very earliest correspondents. Steamer from Hamburg to London, late
in September. Toward the middle of October went to Portsmouth, and came
back to New York in a London packet-ship. Steamers were then only just
beginning to make regular trips.
Returning, Michigan University was quite ready to give me a furlough of
a year or two, without pay; took hold sharp of “Flora of North America,”
and in beginning of next summer (June, 1840) we issued the parts 3 and 4
of vol. i. Then went at the “Compositæ;” was interrupted a while in
summer of 1841, when I went with John Carey, and James Constable for a
part of the time, on a botanical trip up the Valley of Virginia to the
mountains of North Carolina, getting as far as to Grandfather and Roan.
It was, I think, in the spring of 1841 that the first part of the
“Compositæ” was published, _i. e._, vol. ii. pp. 1-184; the second part,
to p. 400, was out the next spring. Sometime in January, 1842, I made a
visit of two or three days to B. D. Greene in Boston; the first time I
ever saw Boston. Came out one day to Cambridge, dined with his
father-in-law, President Quincy; the company to meet us was Professor
Channing[23] and Professor Treadwell.[24] Sometime in April, I received
a letter from President Quincy, telling me that the Corporation of the
university would elect me Fisher professor of natural history if I would
beforehand signify my acceptance. The endowment then yielded fifteen
hundred dollars a year. I was to have a thousand and allow the rest to
accumulate for a while. Meanwhile I was to give only a course of
botanical lectures, in the second spring term, and look after the
Garden. But more work was soon added. I came in July, in the midst of
vacation, before Commencement, which was then in September; got
lodgings, with room for my then small herbarium, in the house of Deacon
Munroe. Went late in September on an excursion to Mount Washington, by
way of the Notch, along with Tuckerman, then living at his father’s in
Boston. Worked away at “Compositæ,” and in the winter went to New York
and carried the remainder through the press. it was issued in February,
1843.
I must not forget that my little “Elements of Botany” had been sold out,
and the publishers, Carvill, had gone out of business or died. I
prepared in 1841-42 the first edition of my “Botanical Text-Book;” it
was in the course of printing when I was appointed to the Fisher
professorship, so that I could put that title on the title-page, and
have a text-book for my class.
My first session of college work was over about July 1, 1843. The
treasurer, Mr. Samuel Eliot, had given me leave to spend a small sum in
replenishing the Botanic Garden. I met my friend and correspondent,
William S. Sullivant, who had taken strongly to mosses, early in August,
on the Alleghanies beyond Frostburg, Maryland (the railroad went only to
Cumberland), he coming from Columbus, Ohio, I from Cambridge. There we
bought a span of horses and a strong country wagon, and set out on the
mountain expedition, some sketch of which is given in the “American
Journal of Science” for January, 1846. (The first journey is more
particularly detailed in the “American Journal of Science,” xlii., no.
1; 1842?) When Sullivant left me, at Warm Springs on the French Broad,
anxious to get home, I was left in a pretty lonely condition.