210 Rhodora [DECEMBER 
was expert. An invitation to the writer to visit Seabrook, N. H., fol- 
lowed. Upon the ensuing excursion to the Powow River and two 
subsequent trips along the Merrimac, Mr. Eaton’s remarkable knowl- 
edge of habitats became clear. His transference to North Easton 
seemed not to disturb his accurate feeling for localities in which plants 
should be found, an instinct born of long and close familiarity with 
nature, and amounting oftentimes — so to the onlooker it seemed — 
to clairvoyant power. ‘This apparent prescience and very remarkable 
vision distinguished Mr. Eaton among collectors of plants. His eye 
exhausted the details of the field at once, and picked out the smallest 
objects of search at distances which baffle any but the strongest sight. 
Walking rapidly along the roadside he would suddenly retrace his steps 
a little and out of the grass bring forth some small growth altogether 
beneath the range of the ordinary trained observer. This keenness 
was in part a gift, as regards optical perfection, partly the result of 
self-training in concentration and alertness of mind. 
For, finally, this is to be said in honor of Mr. Eaton as a man of 
science, that he achieved what he achieved by his own efforts, unaided, 
and often against the force of circumstances. With only a high school 
education — received at Newburyport and accomplished in half the 
time usually required — he familiarized himself with much in the 
results of modern science, mastered French, German, and Latin 
sufficiently for his needs in taxonomy, mastered the local flora thor- 
oughly and the fauna extensively, and above all won a position of 
authority in the study of two or three groups of particularly difficult 
plants. Most of this was done while he was supporting himself by 
work on a farm. Few men would have overcome the influence of 
poor health, lack of means, and varied discouragements as he did. 
He left two unpublished papers of considerable length, one a study 
in the family Orchidaceae, already announced; the other his most 
important contribution to science, a monograph of North American 
Isoétes, the result of many years of study, revised not long before his 
final illness. 
His friends will be glad to know that in the closing weeks of his life, 
after it had become certain that he could not live, not only did he show 
a calmness and fearlessness, the fruition of a sincerely good life, but he 
was able — such was the strength of his nature — to feel in spite of 
pain much of peaceful enjoyment of his home and of the outdoors 
world. He said that the view from his tent door out across the mead- 
