8 PREFATORY NOTE 



friends and neighbors could not see them. They nicknamed him " Posy " 

 Dodge, which name he did not relish and tried to avoid occasion for its 

 use as much as possible. However, this feeling gradually wore off, and 

 Mr. Dodge, carrying his much-battered vasculum, was a familiar figure 

 on the streets of Port Huron, particularly those streets leading to the 

 country. 



In his early study of botany he was greatly encouraged by the late 

 Professor C. F. Wheeler and by Professor C. K. Davis, both of whom 

 strongly urged him to take up systematic botany seriously, keep field 

 notes, and establish an herbarium so that others might receive the 

 benefit of his labor. He carried on this work until 1893, when he be- 

 came dissatisfied with his collection and "threw most everything out 

 of the back window and began over again". His ambition now was to 

 have an herbarium embracing the flora of North America, and he engaged 

 in exchanging material and building up a general collection. After a 

 time, however, he came to the conclusion that he could do more effective 

 work by confining himself to Michigan and adjacent territory, and his 

 last herbarium labels read: "Plants of the Great Lakes Region.' ; 



In 1908 he became associated with the Michigan Geological and Bio- 

 logical Survey, and through the aid and encouragement of Dr. A. G. 

 Ruthven, Chief Naturalist of the Survey and Director of the Museum 

 of Zoology at the University of- Michigan, Mr. Dodge made many of 

 his later and more important botanical expeditions to Chippewa, Luce, 

 Alger, Schoolcraft, Marquette, Houghton and other northern counties. 

 In the fall of 1917 he began an investigation of the flora of Berrien 

 County, which he did not five to complete. 



As a recognition of his services in extending the knowledge of the 

 flora of Michigan, he was appointed, in 1912, Associate Curator of 

 Botany in the Museum of Zoology, University of Michigan, and con- 

 tinued a valued member of the staff until his death. His splendid 

 herbarium, consisting of between 30,000 and 40,000 finery prepared 

 specimens was left at his death to the Museum of Zoology at Ann Arbor, 

 where it will be available to other students of systematic botanv. 



Mr. Dodge was an excellent correspondent and numbered the fore- 

 most botanists of the country among his friends. He was not interested 

 in the study of plants for the purpose of naming new species, and had 

 little use for the "splitters", as he called that group of botanists who 

 are continually creating new genera and species b} r breaking up the old 

 groups. He was interested principally, as he put it, "in finding out 

 what grows wild in Michigan", and he often expressed the wish that he 

 might live until he had made a complete survey of the State. He con- 

 fined his botanical publications mainly to lists of plants of Michigan and 

 Ontario, but had under preparation at the time of his death an ambitious 

 book giving a list of all the known higher plants of the Great Lakes 



