Mrs. Arvilla J. Ellis 



Too often the ones who have ably assisted in carrying forward 

 an important project are soon forgotten in the expressions of con- 

 gratulation given to the man who leads the project. When the 

 annals of botany are estimated with a just hand, the wives of 

 botanists who have silently sacrificed in order that the husband's 

 work could be more successfully carried to the end, will receive 

 their due reward. The instances are not infrequent, moreover, 

 where silent sacrifice has been supplemented by material aid from 

 the same sources. To one of these this page is inscribed. Arvilla 

 J. Bacon, daughter of Timothy and Mary S. Bacon, was born 

 at Potsdam, New York, February 8, 1831, was married to Job- 

 BickncU Ellis at the same place in 1856, and died at Newfield, 

 New Jersey, July 18, 1899. With her husband she removed to 

 Newfield, New Jersey, in 1865, and in addition to assisting to- 

 build the home, and caring for the household in sickness and in 

 health, she took in various kinds of work to assist in the family 

 support. In this country of poorly supported botanical workers, 

 such is the too common lot of the wives of working bot- 

 anists. But she did more than this. Besides binding many of 

 her husband's books and pamphlets, she prepared some three 

 thousand blank books in which the North American Fungi were 

 issued and in which the greater part of the Ellis collection was 

 mounted. Besides this she arranged at least three fourths of the- 

 200,000 specimens which were issued in this scries and in the 

 Fungi Columbiani, folding papers, inserting specimens, pasting 



labels and inserting in their places. In the language of one who- 

 kncw her best, the quiet spirit always acted on the principle,, 

 " Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do with thy might." It may 

 justly be said that to her extended labor, none the less important 

 and necessary because it was all what has so justly been charac- 

 terized as '• dead work," no less than to that of Mr. Ellis are 

 American mycological students indebted for the valuable and ex- 

 tended issues of exsiccati that for the past twenty years have 

 issued from this quiet house. 



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