EWAN: SAN FRANCISCO AS A MECCA FOR NINETEENTH CENTURY NATURALISTS 35 



alone or in collaboration with Jordan, he published works of classic importance 

 on North American fishes. Evermann published in all 387 books and articles, of 

 which about half are devoted to fishes. 



It was natural that exploration of Alaska often involved San Francisco, for 

 the scientific corps commonly assembled there before departure. Charles Haskins 

 Townsend acted as naturalist on the Revenue Steamer Corivin in 1885, and 

 on the U. S. Fish Commission Steamer Albatross in 1886-1896. Townsend first 

 came to California in 1884 as a field naturalist to collect zoological specimens 

 for the U. S. National Museum. But the Albatross expedition was the most 

 important trip for on it he collected some plants, along with mostly vertebrate 

 material along the Alaskan coast. In other years he visited the Marquesas, 

 Paumotu, Society, Cook, Tonga, and Fiji archipelagoes. Then for thirty-five 

 years he served as Director of the New York Aquarium, and his conservation 

 efforts to save from extinction the Alaskan reindeer, Pribiloff fur seal, and Gala- 

 pagos tortoise earned for him the true gratitude of thoughtful citizens everyAvhere. 



We have remarked on the part that Professor Greene played in stimulating 

 botanical exploration among his students at Berkeley. One of them, Frederick 

 Theodore Bioletti, tells it this way : 



We belonged perhaps to the romantic school of botany. We used the field of botany 

 not as a laboratory but as a playground. Our heroes were not De Bary, nor Stras- 

 burger nor Zimmerman, not even Prantl and Engler, but Theophrastus, Rafinesque, 

 and Edward Lee Greene. 



Bioletti came to be best known as a viticulturist and professor of that subject at 

 his alma mater. In Professor Greene's class with Bioletti were W. L. Jepson, 

 Victor King Chesnut, Walter Blasdale, and Bioletti's particular chum and com- 

 panion on field trips, Charles A. Michener. Of one of these Bioletti writes : 



Victor Chesnut we looked upon as an enemy and outlaw. He had collected a Rihes 

 and a Trifolium in the Napa-Sonoma Mountains in the heart of our main hunting 

 grounds. If we had known his territory we would have invaded it without scruple. 

 To capture a beautiful and apparently new Ribes in a remote gorge on the slopes of 

 Hood's Peak, to bring it back to camp in triumph and then to find that it had already 

 been branded Ribes victoris was intolerable. 



Professor Greene as the Great Chief was of course free from all restrictions. We 

 had too much to gain from his friendship to object to his hunting on our grounds. It 

 was Professor Greene who used the names Michener and Bioletti several times in 

 christening some of our discoveries. For this we were deeply grateful. 



Chesnut entered the United States Department of Agriculture in 1894 in charge 

 of poisonous-plant investigations, his previous instruction in chemistry at Berke- 

 ley serving him well as a background. His Principal Poisonous Plants of the TJ. S. 

 was one of the most popular publications ever issued by the Government, widely 

 copied in the press of the day and translated into French, German, and Bohemian. 

 Elmer Reginald Drew, with whom Chesnut often botanized in the north Coast 

 Ranges, became Professor of Physics at Stanford. Edwin C. Van Dyke, M.D., 

 Assistant Professor of Entomology at Berkeley, was another student of Professor 

 Greene's, and the botanist, Ivar Tidestrom, one of his last before he left Berkeley 

 for Washington. 



Greene himself botanized on San Miguel Island during the summer of 1886, 

 leaving Santa Barbara August 19 and landing at Cuylers Harbor nine days later. 

 The island had been visited by Cabrillo in the winter of 1542-1543, and liis ex- 



