286 Recognition in America 



as a fertile developmental branch of botany, was proving its 

 strength more with every year. Prolific in potentialities, objective 

 physiology was to widen the botanical research orbit to advance 

 the plant sciences both purely and practically and create whole 

 new interpretations from the older fabric, whole new branches 

 of science in organized forms — ecology, genetics, a " new phy- 

 siology," a "new pathology," an "experimental taxonomy," etc. 

 Years would go into the making. But the envisioned future was 

 in the minds of many of the most alert scientists. We do not 

 know what were Smith's ideas of the new botanical society. But 

 Humphrey's reply on December 20, 1896, was: 



As to your scheme for a society, I think it quite impossible. Very many 

 of the men who have stayed out of the Bot[anical] Soc[iety of} America 

 have done so, on account of the size of the fees; and I would never join 

 a society of that sort, no matter how able I might be to do so, financially. 

 As to organs, we have too many already. I think it will not be many years 

 before we can worthily support a journal of the character of the Annals 

 of Botany, without editorials or reviews, filled simply with good papers. 

 But we cannot do it yet, and we want nothing else. I hope to talk it over 

 with you, sometime. But there is no hurry. There will not be more than 

 half a dozen botanists at Boston, and nothing is likely to be done. 



December 30, 1896, botanists present at the Boston meeting 

 of the American Society of Naturalists and some residing in 

 Cambridge gathered in the Cryptogamic Laboratory of Harvard 

 University and heard the report of the committee of which 

 Humphrey was chairman. Those present were Farlow, Wilson, 

 Macfarlane, Emily Gregory, Benjamin Lincoln Robinson of the 

 Gray Herbarium, Thaxter, H. M. Richards, J. M. Greenman, 

 later of the Missouri Botanical Garden, and Ganong, appointed 

 secretary of a " Committee on the organization of a Society for 

 Vegetable Morphology and Physiology to meet annually with the 

 American Society of Naturalists." It was understood and agreed 

 that 



The new Society should conflict as little as possible with those already 

 in existence. There is no need for a new Society of general scope. Since 

 the interests of those most concerned in the movement are mainly in Mor- 

 phology and Physiology, the new Society should be limited in its scope 

 to them and to the broader aspects of Systematic Botany, while Taxonomy 

 and its dependent subjects, so amply provided for in the existent societies, 

 should be excluded. 



