140 CONTRIBUTIONS TO WESTERN BOTANY 
Watson’s life, just a cold statement of fact, nothing like the warm per- 
sonal regard shown for Torre 
Watson’s meteoric advent into botany led many to ask about his 
origin. The records show he graduated from Yale in 1847, and was 
born in 1826, some 26 years before the writer was. He was a teacher 
in Iowa College (now Grinnell) in 1867, and was given the M. A. de- 
gree there about the time of my Colorado explorations in 1879. The 
absence of evidences of personal regard shows him to have been as un- 
social as I have represented him to have been. (Cont. 16:47) As a bot- 
anist, however, he stood nearly at the top. No one but Engelmann has 
evoked as much praise from me as Watson. 
DR. GEORGE VASEY 
Another man whom we all admired for his worth, but whose cali- 
ber was not that of Watson, was Dr. Vasey, botanist of the U. S. Dept. 
of Agriculture, whose chair Coville has rattled around in. Vasey was a 
real man in every way, always prompt and reliable, giving personal at- 
tention to his work. There was no man in the profession for whom I 
and called it Melica frutescens. This was the last letter that I received 
from Vasey. His assistant, L. H. wey, who, after his death, was to 
take his place in charge of the grasses, was pushed aside by Scribner, 
who remained in charge until he was removed. (Cont. 15:30) In 1894 
when I was in Washington, Dr. Rose had as his stenographer, Miss 
Vasey, the daughter of the doctor. She was a very social person and, at 
Dr. Rose’s suggestion, took me over to the Corcoran Art Gallery and 
showed me all around. 
DR. J. N. ROSE 
The lovable Dr. Rose (Cont. 15:30) was no field botanist but very 
conscientious. It was a pity that he and Rydberg allowed Britton to 
dominate them and so sacrificed what leadership they might have had 
among American botanists. I believe they both died disappointed. Rose 
was not a good systematic botanist, because he had poor judgment of re- 
lationship and no ecological training or experience worth naming. Yet 
in the superior manner of the National Herbarium he tried to suppress 
me by the weight of his opinion, when he wrote that he had no sym- 
pathy with my position regarding genera in the Umbelliferae. This 
