THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 129 



as are many other buttonlike flowers. Finally, cuckoo-buds 

 applied to some species of Ranunculus finds authority in 

 Shakespeare where 



"Cuckoo buds of yellow hue 

 Do paint the meadow with delight." 



A LITTLE-KNOWN BOTANIST 



By J. E. NkIvSon. 



T IKE every science and every branch of human knowledge, 

 ■'-' botany has its biographical side; but it occurs to rela- 

 tively few to ask what manner of men these were whose work 

 has come down to us — how they lived and spoke and worked, 

 and what were the events of their life. Pure science is sup- 

 posed to abstract this "personal equation," and to concern 

 itself simply with the attained results. Yet to me, since I 

 have not enjoyed the privilege of a strictly scientific training, 

 and have never been able to lose sight of personal considera- 

 tions, the personality of the great botanists has always been a 

 source of the keenest interest. Prefixed to Gray's Manual, 

 my first text-book, is a long list of the authors mentioned in 

 the body of the work, with the accepted abbreviations of their 

 names. Many beginning students seem never to consult this 

 list at all, and many fnore use it in cold blood as they would 

 a table of logarithms; but I have to confess that it has always 

 exerted a profound fascination upon me, and has acted as a 

 sort of standing challenge to find out more about these men 

 than their mere names, or than a bare catalogue of their scien- 

 tific and academic achievements. But in this ambition I have 

 never met with much success, because the ordinary encyclo- 

 pedia does not give this sort ^of data, and the sources from 

 which any personal information might be drawn are both 



