170 



his wife, Elizabeth Gertrude, deeded a part of this land, with the 

 old "Britton Cottage," to the Staten Island Institute of Arts and 

 Sciences, in the hope that the old house would "long be preserved 

 as an illustration of early colonial construction." 



According to the available photographs, Nathaniel Lord Britton 

 was a very boyish-looking youth, when, in 1879, at the a ? e OI 

 twenty years and a little less than five months, the trustees of Co- 

 lumbia College conferred upon him the degree of Engineer of 

 Mines. There was in those years no formal instruction in botany 

 in Columbia College or its School of Mines. However, Dr. John 

 Strong Newberry, the Professor of Geology and Mineralogy, was 

 an "all-round naturalist of the old school," who had published a 

 few papers on living plants and many on fossil ones. He had en- 

 couraged young Britton's botanical interests, which had been fos- 

 tered by early association with Mr. John J. Crooke, on Staten 

 Island. Crooke was a graduate of Yale, primarily a chemist and 

 physicist, who made large collections of shells, birds, minerals, and 

 plants. On Mr. Crooke's death in 191 1, Doctor Britton wrote that 

 he had been favored with his "intimate acquaintance since boyhood 

 and his [Britton's] direction to lines of scientific inquiry was in- 

 duced by this companionship and suggestion." 1 It is said that even 

 as a child the young Nathaniel, when taken on drives, knew the 

 names of roadside trees and other plants in a way that seemed 

 very mysterious to his parents. In those early years on Staten 

 Island, association with the slightly older Arthur Hollick, his class- 

 mate in the School of Mines, was also a factor in shaping the de- 

 velopment of the future botanist. In company with Hollick, he 

 joined the Torrey Botanical Club in October, 1877. Hollick and 

 Britton's "The Flora of Richmond County, New York" was pub- 

 lished in 1879, the year of their graduation. Britton's first appear- 

 ance in botanical literature had been somewhat earlier — in the 

 Bulletin oj the Torrey Botanical Club for ( )ctober, 1877, under the 

 title "Staten Island Plants." After miscellaneous notes on the 

 local occurrence of various species, he observes that on dropping 

 open-flowered plants of Opuntia vulgaris (?) the radiately ex- 

 tended anthers are by the shock (or by a slight tap, even when not 

 dropped) drawn in against the stigmas, afterwards, when left quiet, 



1 Journal of The Xew York Botanical Garden 12: H>i. rgil. 



