62 Rhodora [APRIL 
He made rich collections in the sand barrens and swamps about 
Kankakee, discovering Sphaeralcea remota, still known only from the 
island in the Kankakee River where he found it. Most of these col- 
lections were made while he walked on crutches or with two canes. 
He told me that he carried his vasculum over his shoulder and a camp 
stool with his crutch or cane in one hand. To secure a plant he would 
drop the camp stool, which opened of itself, then he would lower him- 
self to the stool and dig the plant. He recovered from his lameness 
but often suffered acute pain from cold or wet or overexertion. But 
this did not deter him from making botanical trips that would have 
taxed a more robust man — in the dunes I have seen him tire out 
more than one able-bodied man. While teaching in Chicago he spent 
many of his vacations on extended trips, visiting the Saguenay region 
in Quebec, the Menominee iron region in upper Michigan, and other 
places about Lake Superior, and in northern Wisconsin. 
Mr. Hill made a critical study of several difficult genera, particu- 
larly Potamogeton, Carex, Quercus, Prunus, Salix and Crataegus. 
The last ten or twelve years were mostly devoted to the study of 
mosses. Unfortunately his modesty often prevented his publishing 
his conclusions. His note-books, filled with detailed observations 
and comparisons, contain full descriptions of several species written 
long before they were published by others. His bibliography, of 162 
titles, shows the range of his botanical interest. He was a correspond- 
ent of Dr. Gray and Dr. Watson, contributed specimens and critical 
notes to Dr. Morong for his work on Potamogeton, and made extensive 
field studies of Crataegus for Prof. Sargent. It was characteristic of 
him to give unsparingly of his knowledge to further the work of others, 
great or small, from critical notes for Prof. Sargent to helping me with 
a puzzling Carex or elucidating the German-tinged Latin of some of 
Kunth’s descriptions of grasses. He amassed an herbarium of some 
16,000 sheets, much the greater part being his own collections, and an ° 
exceptionally fine botanical library. 
The study of geology he carried on simultaneously with that of 
botany and the relation of the two he impressed on his students. 
Before the word ecology was invented he was calling our attention 
to the zones of vegetation about the sloughs in the dune region of 
northern Indiana and pointing out to us the successive stages by 
which vegetation converted the sloughs into dry land. He possessed 
the vision of plant life as a whole, seeing it as an active factor in build- 
ing and shaping the surface of the earth. 
