Yours affectionately, ASA GRAY. As this is the last letter from Dr. Gray to Dean Church, to be printed, the occasion is taken to introduce a letter written by Dean Church to Mrs. Gray some time after the death of his friend, when acknowledging the receipt of a copy of the “Scientific Papers.” DEAN CHURCH TO MRS. GRAY. I have to thank you for two volumes of most interesting reading. Besides the interest of the subject discussed, there is a special _cachet_ in all Dr. Gray’s papers, great and small, which is his own, and which seems to me to distinguish him from even his more famous contemporaries. There is the scientific spirit in it, but firm, imaginative, fearless, cautious, with large horizons, and very attentive and careful to objections and qualifications; and there is besides, what is so often wanting in scientific writing, the human spirit, always remembering that, besides facts and laws, however wonderful or minute, there are souls and characters over against them, of as great account as they, in whose mirrors they are reflected, whom they excite and delight, and without whose interest they would be blanks. This combination comes out in his great generalizations, in the bold and yet considerate way in which he deals with Darwin’s ideas, and in the notices of so many of his scientific friends, whom we feel that he was interested in as men, and not only as scientific inquirers. The sweetness and charity, which we remember so well in living converse, is always on the lookout for some pleasant feature in the people of whom he writes, and to give kindliness and equity to his judgment. And what a life of labors it was! I am perfectly aghast at the amount of grinding work of which these papers are the indirect evidence.... For they [his religious views] were a most characteristic part of the man, and the seriousness and earnest conviction with which he let them be known had, I am convinced, a most wholesome effect on the development of the great scientific theory in which he was so much interested. It took off a great deal of the theological edge, which was its danger, both to those who upheld and those who opposed it. I am sure things would have gone more crossly and unreasonably, if his combination of fearless religion and clearness of mind, and wise love of truth, had not told on the controversy. TO J. D. HOOKER. CAMBRIDGE, June 9, 1884. Your last is of May 24th from the Camp, and gives us on the whole better accounts of your invalids. Bentham at Boultibrooke! I wonder if he would care to have letters from me, or from Mrs. Gray, to whom he wrote a treasure of a note on the New Year. We had an idea it might only worry him.... I wish we could see you at the Camp and among the heather, and I wish I could form a clear conception of just how you are placed, taking the Rotherys’ house as a point of departure.