OBITUARY. 



SERENO WATSON. 



Born December i, 1826 — Died March g, 1892. 



IN the death of Sereno Watson, Curator of the Herbarium of 

 Harvard University, American Systematic Botany has sustained 

 its greatest loss since that of Asa Gray. Mr. Watson was born at 

 East Windsor Hill, Connecticut, December 1,1826, and graduated from 

 Yale College in 1847. For twenty years after graduation, he was 

 engaged chiefly in teaching and in literary work. During this time 

 he also took up the study of medicine at the University of New York. 

 Although he had early manifested an interest in plants, and as a 

 teacher had made some study of them, it was not until 1867 that he 

 became actively engaged in botanical pursuits. In July of this year 

 he joined as a volunteer the United States Geological Expedition 

 under Clarence King, to explore the region of the fortieth parallel of 

 latitude in Western America. For the first year Mr. Watson's work 

 was largely topographical, but at the close of the year he took charge 

 of the Botanical division. The material collected in the new territory 

 was worked up in the Herbaria of Professors D. C. Eaton and Asa 

 Gray; and in 1871, with Professor Eaton, Mr. Watson published the 

 5th volume of King's Report of the Geological Exploration of the Fortieth 

 Parallel. It was at this time that Professor Gray invited Mr. Watson 

 to become his assistant ; and since then his life has been devoted to 

 a critical study of tlie North American Flora, and to the care and 

 development of the Gray Herbarium and Botanical Library of 

 Harvard University. In appreciation of the high merit of his 

 botanical work, the honorary degree of Doctor of Philosophy was 

 conferred upon him by the University of Iowa, in which he had 

 formerly been an instructor. 



When it is considered that Dr. Watson's work in Systematic 

 Botany began only about twenty-five years before his death, the 

 number of his publications is wonderful. He has described over 

 one thousand species of phaenogams, mostly from the Western 

 United States and Mexico ; and nearly all have stood the test of time 

 and further exploration. Most of these species were published in a 

 series of eighteen Contributions to American Botany in the Proceedings 

 of the American Academy of Arts and Science, in which he has also 

 elaborated many orders and genera, important among which are the 



