BENJAMIN D. GREENE? 
BenJAMiIn D. GREENE, Esq., of Boston, died on the 14th 
of October last, at the age of sixty-nine years. He was born 
in 1793, and graduated at Harvard University in the year 
1812. He first pursued legal studies, partly in the then cele- 
brated school at Litchfield, Connecticut, and was duly ad- 
mitted to the bar in Boston. He then took up the study of 
medicine, and completed his medical course in the medical 
schools of Scotland and Paris, taking his medical degree at 
Edinburgh in the year 1821. The large advantages of such 
a training having been enjoyed, Mr. Greene did not engage 
in the practice of either profession. An ample inheritance, 
which rendered professional exertion unnecessary, conspiring 
with a remarkably quiet and contemplative disposition and a 
refined taste, led him to devote his time to literary culture and 
to scientific pursuits. His fondness for botany, which early 
developed, was stimulated by personal intercourse with vari- 
ous European botanists, and especially with his surviving 
friend, the now venerable Sir William Hooker, then professor 
at the University of Glasgow, to whom he naturally became 
much attached, and by whom he was highly appreciated. 
In botany, as in everything else, Mr. Grgene sought to be 
silently useful. He never himself published any of his dis- 
coveries or observations. The few species to which his name 
is annexed were given to the world at second hand. But hjs 
collections were extensive, his original observations numer- 
ous and accurate, and both were freely placed at the disposal 
of working botanists. He early saw that the great obstacles 
to the advantageous prosecution of botanical investigation in 
this country, and especially in New England, were the want 
of books and the want of authentic collections; and these 
1 American Journal of Science and Arts, 2 ser., xxxv, 449, (1863.) 
