292 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF [1895. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN HOWARD REDFIELD. 

 BY THOMAS MEEHAN. 



The task assigned to me by the Academy of preparing a suitable 

 memoir of our late fellow-member, John Howard Redfield, is not an 

 easy one. To make famous one who sought not fame; and to tell to 

 the world of science the story of the life of one whose modesty and 

 self-abnegation scarcely allowed him to appreciate the value of 

 his own work, is surely a difficult undertaking. It has been my 

 fortune to have an acquaintance with mankind to an extent enjoyed 

 by few; with men and women famous in many walks of life; but I 

 have rarely known one who worked with such an earnest purpose 

 to be useful, and who was at the same time so indifferent as to 

 whether the world knew of it or not, or whether he received credit 

 for the work which he had done. Associated with him as I have 

 been in the botanical work of the Academy since the early sixties, 

 and I may say closely connected with him in that work for the past 

 twenty years, I am amazed, now that he is gone, when I think of 

 how little I know of the man beyond his own beloved personality in 

 connection with that work. Once only did he stop to tell me of his 

 early life-struggle in the pursuit of knowledge. Referring to an early 

 incident in my own life occasioned by a little fern we were examin- 

 ing, it moved him to say how similar were our experiences. Though 

 but four years of age he could remember going with his father to 

 visit his mother's grave, and how much he became interested in the 

 flowers which grew there; of his being told that one was the 

 "yarrow," and of his remembering the plant by this name forever 

 after; how his father, like himself, had no early advantages but 

 with an insatiable curiosity and such scientific books as chance threw 

 in his way, was continually talking to him, as he grew in years, of 

 the cause and eflect of natural phenomena as he understood them; 

 how his father and he took a wagon ride to his wife's relations 

 through a storm-torn forest; while the son was looking for flowers, 

 minerals, shells and anything that was curious, the father was noting 

 the different directions in which the trees had been prostrated, and 



