Perfection and persistence are the best descriptive expressions 

 of the work of Ames and the studies carried out under his super- 

 vision. Both highly critical and scholarly books and papers were 

 published one after the other in rapid succession and in a tradi- 

 tion that was not only expected but eagerly awaited by the scien- 

 tific world. Thus, in 1905, the first volume of a series of seven 

 was printed under the title, orc hidaceae. His botanical re- 

 sources, rich as they were, never satisfied him. Consequently, 

 Ames's emphasis on documentation reached into the most 

 unexpected places. Already in 1908, he had secured a full set of 

 photographic reproductions of all orchid specimens from the 

 herbarium of Linnaeus, kept in the Linnean Society in London, 

 England, of which he was one of the few foreign fellows. 



Step by step, year after year, he systematically built up a 

 collection of photographic representation of types from Kew, 

 the Lindley Herbarium and from Paris. The morning of May 6, 

 1914, when the provisions of the will of Reichenbach expired, 

 the determined Oakes Ames was sitting on the steps of the Natu- 

 ral History Museum of Vienna awaiting its opening to have a 

 first-hand look at the buried treasures of the Reichenbach 

 Herbarium. 



Over the years, a number of people helped Ames to build his 

 ever expanding Botanical Laboratory. In 1915, the freshly grad- 

 uated but polio-stricken Harvard man, Charles Schweinfurth, 

 was hired to work in the Herbarium to look after the living 

 orchids in the Ames's greenhouses. This new appointment 

 turned out to be one of the rare concurrences of fate when the 

 right man was given the right job at the right time. It did not 

 take long for Ames to recognize that Schweinfurth's memory 

 and especially his power of observation for minute details could 

 be put to more constructive use in the laboratory than in the 

 greenhouses. That prudent step paid a magnificent return. For 

 the next 50 years, Charles Schweinfurth not only helped to 

 expand the orchid herbarium, but also maintained its tradition 

 of high scholarship and careful research beyond Professor 

 Ames's active time of participation. His Harvard colleagues on 

 November 29, 1965, presented him with a citation: 



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