THE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK 



which offered to enter botanical science as a profession. He 

 gradually succeeded in accomplishing this through various 

 errands and commissions, not free from discouragement, but he 

 was very persistent. His most noteworthy effort in this direc- 

 tion was his collecting of botanical specimens in sets for sale, in 

 Central Florida, during parts of the years 1894 and 1895; he 

 studied these large and important collections at the herbarium 

 of Columbia College with some help from me, and the sets, con- 

 taining specimens of many rare species, were sold to good ad- 

 vantage, enabling him to continue his botanical studies. The 

 opportunity came for a remunerative position when the work of 

 the New York Botanical Garden was initiated in 1896. 



His first important errand as an employee of the Garden was 

 in 1901, when, after an invitation by Sir William Thiselton-Dyer, 

 Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, England, we 

 sent him to that institution for study, and to select a large num- 

 ber of living plants duplicated in the Kew Collections, for the 

 formative collections in The Bronx; this accession was very im- 

 portant, including over 1000 species, and many of the plants 

 obtained there by Mr. Nash at that time are still living with us. 

 In the autumn of 1901 he accompanied Dr. John K. Small to 

 Florida and they collected over 1200 specimens of living plants, 

 with many museum and herbarium specimens. On a second 

 European trip in 1902 he studied and obtained plants in exchange 

 from the Botanical Gardens at Kew, Edinburgh, Cambridge, 

 Brussels, Paris, Utrecht, and other institutions, over 1500 

 species in all. He made important and successful collecting ex- 

 peditions to Haiti in 1903, to the Bahamian Islands, Inagua and 

 Little Inagua in 1904, with Mr. Norman Taylor, and to Haiti 

 and the Turks Islands in 1905, again with Mr. Taylor. 



The development of the plant collections of the New York 

 Botanical Garden, their botanical identification, labeling and 

 recording, the accumulation of herbarium specimens of the plants 

 cultivated, public lectures and demonstrations, and replies to 

 inquiries for information about plants have fully occupied Mr. 

 Nash's time in recent years. With Dr. Barnhart he has edited 

 "Addisonia" since the commencement of that periodical in 1916; 

 he has personally superintended the newer plantations of roses, 

 gladioli and other horticultural features, and he gave much 

 attention to the orchid collection. Since May, 1909, he has been 



414 



