214 THE BOTANISTS OF PHILADELPHIA. 



herbaria in his charge. He was Corresponding Secretary of 

 the Conchological Section in 1879, and after having been 

 long a member of its PubHcation Committee, was made its 

 chairman in 1891. It will thus be seen how important his 

 services were to this institution, and how great the esteem 

 in which his good sense and active exertions, as well as his 

 wise and thoughtful counsel, were held by his associates. 



But beyond all this, and especially after his retirement 

 from business cares in 1885, he accomplished a great work 

 which no one else connected with the Academy had time to 

 do, and for which, indeed, no one was better fitted than he. 

 When he took charge he found four distinct herbaria, as 

 follows : that of Dr. C. W. Short ; that of De Schweinitz, com- 

 posed principally of fungi, very many of them types ; the 

 General Herbarium, and the North American Herbarium, 

 the latter of which is of the utmost value, not only because 

 of its size and completeness, but also because it contains a 

 large number of type specimens of Nuttall, Pursh, and 

 others of the early botanists of the country. The specimens 

 in these were loose in sheets of paper, very often those of 

 more than one collector huddled in together, with the labels 

 but loosely attached to the specimens. On the death of 

 Elias Durand only one worker was left to give a few hours 

 a day to its- care. Its condition may be imagined by the 

 reply of Dr. Gray to an application for a share in some 

 specimens * — " What is the use of throwing valuable 

 material into a dust-bin." With great care and good judg- 

 ment, and an indefatigable energy, he brought order out of 

 this confusion, so that, at last he had got the greater and 

 more valuable parts of the herbaria arranged and mounted 

 and properly catalogued. Nor did his benefactions end 



* 1895. Botanical Gazette, XX, p. 195. 



