30 A CENTURY OF PROGRESS IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 



in 1885 to Guadalupe and Cedros islands with Professor E. L. Greene, and several 

 to Cantillas Canyon, which he was the first naturalist to explore, once with 

 Edward Palmer. 



Associated with Harford and Dunn in the Arthrozoic Club was James John 

 Rivers, a broadly trained Eng-lish biologist and an acquaintance of T. H. Huxley, 

 Charles Darwin, A. R. Wallace, and others. He came to this country in 1867 and 

 arrived in California between 1875 and 1880, having made the friendship of Pro- 

 fessor Francis Huntington Snow, of the University of Kansas, in the interim. 

 Rivers was Curator of Organic Natural History at the University of California 

 from 1881 to 1895, when he removed to Santa Monica. His biological interests 

 included insects, shells, spiders, and reptiles, as well as botany. 



It was during late February or March in 1874 that the Reverend Edward 

 Lee Greene first came to California from Colorado. An enthusiastic field collector, 

 his coming rather initiated a botanical revival. In Colorado his duties as Episco- 

 palian rector were light and he had filled his days with botany. "But my new 

 parish at Vallejo is too much for me," he wrote Ludwig Kumlein back in Wis- 

 consin. "I have a large congregation and good salary, but with all that, so much 

 pastoral work, that my scientific studies are interfered with not a little." Napa 

 Valley in the spring ! — it must have set Greene's botanical senses atingle. Always 

 aware of the importance of the written record against which discoveries must be 

 checked, he repaired to the Academy across the Bay and conferred with Dr. 

 Kellogg. Greene stayed at Vallejo about a year, then returned to Colorado in 

 1875. He filled the pulpit at Georgetown until March, 1876, then returned to 

 California, this time to Yreka. Along with his shepherding, he found time to 

 botani/e on the Humbug Plills that first year and in other directions away from 

 town. On January 21, 1877, he set off for New Mexico and another charge at 

 Silver City, taking his time along the way to collect plants. For the next few 

 years he explored the mountains of western New Mexico and in 1882 returned 

 to California as pastor of St. Mark's Episcopal Church on Bancroft Way in 

 Berkeley. From this time forward Greene took an intense interest in the Cali- 

 fornia flora, and it is agreed that his best work was done with that subject. He 

 spent much of his time at the Academy both while he was at St. Mark's and after 

 becoming the first Professor of Botany at the University of California. It was 

 during this period that he founded the botanical journal Pittonia. He continued 

 his field work in California and in Lower California, and from his own and the 

 collections of others described hundreds of new species. The pages of the Acad- 

 emy's BuIJetm bear witness to his driving capacity for work. The appearance of 

 the Botany of California posed a challenge for Greene and some other resident 

 botanists like him to extend the boundaries of our knowledge. Greene's coming 

 to the University as Professor of Botany initiated a program of local exploration 

 into the more remote parts of the State by his students and correspondents. Some 

 of these will be briefly noticed at a later point in our chronicle. 



The Centennial Exposition of 1876 called for nation-wide exhibits, including 

 forestry and horticulture, and George Richard Vasey, son of the Washington 

 agrostologist. Dr. George Vasey, came to California for w^ood exhibits in 1875. 

 He also made general collections of vascular plants as far north as Mendocino 

 County, but his labels liave caused some serious confusion from a lack of careful 

 localitv data. 



