179 



York Botanical Garden, at the suggestion of Doctor Britton's suc- 

 cessor, Dr. E. D. Merrill, in 1930, the first number appearing in 



1931- 



Doctor Britton was honored with the presidency of the Botanical 

 Society of America for the year 1897-98, and again, of the larger 

 more democratic Society, for 1921, and he and Mrs. Britton were 

 patrons of this Society. As he advanced in years, he developed a 

 reluctance to traveling (unless on board a steamer headed south- 

 ward) and also to making public addresses. When the time came 

 for him to deliver an address as retiring President of the Botanical 

 Society of American at Toronto in December, 1921, he sent a sub- 

 stitute, bearing his check for $1,000 drawn to the order of the So- 

 ciety, in lieu of a formal address ! 



With his friend Doctor Arthur Hollick, Doctor Britton was ac- 

 tive in organizing and developing the Natural Science Association 

 of Staten Island (now the Staten Island Institute of Arts and 

 Sciences) and was its President, 1888-91. He was also actively 

 interested in the Torrey Botanical Club and the New York Acad- 

 emy of Sciences, of which he was President for two years ( 1906 and 

 1907). In 1913, he was honored with the presidency of the New 

 York State Forestry Association. Doctor Britton received the 

 honorary degree of Doctor of Science from Columbia University in 

 1904 and the degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of 

 Pittsburgh in 1924. He was a member of the National Academy 

 of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American 

 Academy of Arts and Sciences, a foreign member of the Linnean 

 Society of London, the Czechoslovakian Botanical Society, the 

 National Medical Institute of Mexico, Honorary President of the 

 International Desert Conservation League, the Cactus and Succu- 

 lent Society of America, etc. 



Doctor Britton was of slight and apparently frail physique. 

 Many of his friends marveled that he could hold out and keep active 

 until several months after the seventy-fifth anniversary of his birth. 

 He retired from the directorship of the Botanical Garden on August 

 1, 1929, when in his seventy-first year. Many men would have 

 been content then to rest upon their achievements, especially if 

 their achievements had been as notable as his, but an indomitable 

 urge and ingrained habit kept him busy with his studies of the 

 Cyperaceae and of the flora of his beloved Porto Rico until within 



