Rbodora 
JOURNAL OF 
THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 
Vol. 13. November, 1911. No. 155. 
CYRUS GUERNSEY PRINGLE. 
Ezra BRAINERD. 
(With portrait.) 
In the death of Cyrus Guernsey Pringle, on the 25th of last May, 
botanical Science lost a collector whose record is unrivalled. We may 
safely estimate that in his thirty-five years of field work he distrib- 
uted to the various herbaria of the world over 500,000 specimens, 
embracing some 20,000 species, about 12 per cent of which were new 
to science. And his work was superior in quality as well as in quantity, 
his specimens being carefully and judiciously selected, and always 
neatly prepared. His dried plants have been often held up as models 
for young collectors, and largely through his good example the quality 
of herbarium material has been everywhere greatly improved during 
the last thirty years. 
Mr. Pringle! was born in East Charlotte, Vermont, May 6, 1838. 
On his father’s side his ancestry was Scotch Presbyterian; his maternal 
grandfather, Asa Harris, was of Puritan stock. Cyrus G. Pringle was 
bred to the simple but intellectual life of the old New England 
farmer; he was well schooled at Hinesburg, Vermont, and at Stan- 
bridge, Quebec, and nearly ready for college, when the death of an 
older brother compelled him to aid his widowed mother in the 
management of the farm. 
In early manhood Mr. Pringle became deeply interested in the 
religious and ethical doctrines of the Friends, of whom there were 
1 This surname is written ' Prindle' by members of the family now living. Mr. C. 
G. Pringle claimed to be restoring the ancestral form of the name. 
