Mrs. Ames was an accomplished portrait artist. Ex- 
amples of this aspect of her artistic contribution, hanging 
in the Botanical Museum, consist of life-sized oil paint- 
ings of the Museum’s three directors: Professor George 
Lincoln Goodale, Professor Oakes Ames, and Professor 
Paul C. Mangelsdort. [t is unique to have the portraits 
of three men whose service spanned a period of 79 years— 
from 1888 to 1967——painted by a single artist. 
Truly a great lady and an outstanding artist, Blanche 
Ames? influence will long be felt in botany, for she spent 
au great part of her life interpreting the beauty of plants 
for others. This characteristic of her life was appropriately 
stressed at memorial services for Mrs. Ames by the Rev. 
Mr. Edmund Palmer Clarke of the Unitarian Church of 
North Easton. “If Mrs. Ames had been a man, we 
would have said of her that she was ‘a man of parts’... 
wv person of much ability and many talents... Those of 
you who knew her best will see the aptness of my using 
the phrase to describe her. Perhaps even better, now that 
she has gone from us, is Shelley’s...: ‘She is a portion 
of the loveliness which once she made more lovely. 
For this was her greatest talent —to know nature—to 
reproduce it in her drawings for those less perceptive than 
she, and to give expression to those things which made 
us better because she had lived amongst us.”” 
The staff of the Museum can think of no better way 
of expressing its appreciation of Blanche Ames* devotion 
to botanical art than to present, on the very press that 
has known so well her skillful pen, a selection of her 
artistic and scientific contributions. 
—Ricnarp Evans SCHULTES 
