Vol. XXIX 

 1912 



J Brewsteu, In Memorium: Henry Augustus Purdie. 



daily in spring, summer and autiunn, going to them quite as often 

 alone as with companions, for, like all sincere lovers of nature, he 

 had no aversion to solitary walks. During this period, his hearing, 

 once acute and discriminating, became duller and duller until only 

 the loudest bird songs, coming from very near at hand, attracted 

 his notice. His eyesight, never of the best, was steadily failing too. 

 Largely because of these unfortunate and ever-increasing disabili- 

 ties, he turned his attention more and more from birds to plants, 

 until the latter came to absorb the greater part of it, at least when- 

 ever he went afield, filling iiim witli fresh enthusiasm and interest, 

 and bringing him into intimate relations with new friends. Yet 

 the old ornithological interests and friendships were never laid 

 aside or neglected wherever it was possible to maintain them. With 

 the plant life about Boston he became, in the course of only a few 

 years, surprisingly familiar. Many a rare or locally- restricted 

 species was ferreted out by him, often where its presence had 

 hitherto been unknown, if not (juite unsuspected. There were 

 certain individual living plants or restricted groups of them to 

 which he especially devoted himself, visiting them annually at 

 just the time when they were in the perfection of their bloom and 

 evidently regarding such attention as no less a duty than a pleasure. 

 These field studies w(M-e conducted very quietly, but so sedulously, 

 intelligently and effectively that in the end they resulted in the 

 acquisition of a store of information concerning the scope and value 

 of which Mr. Walter Deane has been kind enough to express for 

 me the following autlioritative and pleasingly favorable opinion: 

 "Mr. Purdie was passionately fond of the study of {)lant 

 life, taking special interest in certain groups of flowering species 

 and vascular cryptogams. He was, strictly speaking, a field 

 botanist, the systematic study of specific relations, acquired in 

 the herbarium by work on the material there, not being much 

 to his taste. Hence many groups, including the Najadacese, 

 Graminepe, Cyperacesc, and the like, that require much closet 

 study, did not particularly interest him, but for such difficult genera 

 as Dcsniodiam, Lcspcdcza, Aster, Solidago, and many others his 

 interest was imbouiided. From earliest spring to late autumn and 

 often in the winter he loved to wander over field, wood and meadow, 

 studying from close observation the abundant material ever at 



