28 Rhodora [FEBRUARY 
It was always his object to enrich the Gray Herbarium which he 
considered had the first claim to any of his specimens. Later under 
the inspiration of Merritt L. Fernald, Maine became a field of his 
active operations. Nor were the other New England States neglected. 
Many were the collecting trips in Vermont with Ezra Brainerd, and 
in Rhode Island with J. Franklin Collins and William Whitman 
Bailey. 
An especially notable expedition was that to Mt. Katahdin in 1900. 
The mountain had never been systematically botanized. Dr. Ken- 
nedy had a log cabin built in the Basin, a great ravine in the heart of 
the massif at an elevation of over 3000 ft. and from this base for two 
weeks with Joseph R. Churchill, Merritt L. Fernald, J. Franklin 
Collins, Emile F. Williams and five guides, explored the mountain 
as thoroughly as weather and time permitted, many rarities being 
discovered. 
It has been my privilege to read the botanical journals that Dr. 
Kennedy kept religiously from 1896 to 1915. "There may have been 
earlier journals but these are not now available. 
It is clear that plants were ever in Dr. Kennedy's thoughts. He 
noted with extreme minuteness everything he gathered and particu- 
larly any specimen that seemed to depart in any particular from the 
type. Also extraordinarily full were his memoranda as to locality. 
His journals of European travel are equally interesting and wherever 
he went the plant life was foremost in his observations. In 1900, as 
has been said before, he went to Virginia Beach with Charles E. 
Faxon to observe the total eclipse of the sun on May 28th. "This 
phenomenon impressed him exceedingly and the European trip of 
1905 was undertaken principally to see the eclipse of August 30th. 
This was total at Burgos in Spain and thither he went with his family, 
visiting Holland and France on the way. He writes on August 30th: 
“We drove in an omnibus along the dusty and much frequented 
highway to the astronomical station we visited yesterday, on the high, 
wide plain about two miles south of the city. Mounted cavalry were 
scouring about the boundaries to keep people off the space reserved 
for the foreigners and the astronomers and we were soon installed as 
amateurs.... There were no trees except at the edge of the highway. 
Everywhere else extended the broad high plain with what little vegeta- 
tion there was trampled down by horses and men. 
“ A small Agrostis, a minute Plantago with very narrow leaves and 
