Rbodora 
JOURNAL OF 
THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 
Vol. 19. February, 1917. No. 218. 
BOTANICAL ACTIVITIES OF PERCIVAL LOWELL. 
C. S. SARGENT. 
Taar Percival Lowell took an active interest in trees was probably 
not known to many persons, for he published only one botanical 
paper and he had no botanical associates except in this Arboretum. 
It is not surprising that a man with his active and inquiring mind 
brought up in New England should, when he found himself in Arizona, 
want to know something of the strange plants which grew everywhere 
-about him and which were so entirely unlike the plants which he had 
known as a boy in Massachusetts, and later in Japan and Korea. 
The love of plants, too, was in his blood and only needed the oppor- 
tunity of this new field to make itself felt. 
Percival Lowell’s great great grandfather, John Lowell, was one 
of the original members of the Massachusetts Society for Promoting 
Agriculture and its second President, serving from 1796 until his death 
in 1802. He is less well known for his connection with rural affairs 
than his son John Lowell, spoken of generally in his day as “the 
Norfolk farmer,” and a generous and successful promotor of scientific 
agriculture and horticulture in Massachusetts, whom Daniel Webster 
called “the uniform friend of all sorts of rural economy.” The 
second John Lowell became a member of the Agricultural Society in 
1816 and served from the time of his election until 1830 as its Corre- 
sponding Secretary, and as one of the editors of its publication, The 
Massachusetts Agricultural Repository and Journal. During these 
years articles by him on agriculture, horticulture and forestry are 
found in almost every number. In volume v.. published in 1819 
there is an important paper by John Lowell on “The Gradual Diminu- 
