228b THE AMERICAN MIDLAND NATURALIST 
When he was still a boy his parents moved West and settled along 
the Sangamon River in Illinois. He served in the Civil War as 
private and on the campaign, collected plants and determined them 
in odd moments from a copy of Wood’s botany which he carried 
in his knapsack. After the war he received the degree Ph. B. 
at Albion, Wisconsin in 1866. Thenceforth a longing to botanize in 
other fields drew him to Colorado in 1870. Here he became an 
Episcopal minister, and he asked for charges in country places 
the better to devote his spare time to his favorite science. He 
botanized through Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. 
He was instructor, or professor, in the University of California 
from 1885 to 1895, when he came East to take the chair of Botany 
in the Catholic University of America at Washington, D. C. 
In 1894 he received the doctorate from the University of 
Notre Dame. In May, 1904, he left the Catholic University and 
became honorary associate in Botany in the Smithsonian Institute, 
where he had been occupied in research in systematic and historical 
botany until in the fall of 1914 he arranged to come to Notre Dame 
University to take charge of the graduate course in botany. His 
numerous collections and library were left to the University. 
Dr. Greene died after a rather prolonged wasting and painful 
stomach trouble at Providence Hospital, Washington, D. C., on 
Nov. 10, 1915. He had gone to Washington to meet again his 
old friends and associates and finish the remaining chapters of 
his second volume of ‘‘ Landmarks.” 
Dr. Greene will be remembered by all who knew him long 
or met him but casually as a type of gentlemanly kindness and 
modesty that betokens deep learning. Little, however, would 
the ordinary observer suspect his profound erudition except by 
long association. Kind and gentle with all he could be unrelent- 
ing in attacking sham or presumptuous ignorance. when he could 
use all the power of art and elegant expression in sustaining what 
he considered truth. There are some who were not in sympathy 
with his ideas of plant divisions, but the botanists with keen 
sense of analysis and deep perception of differences, in contra- 
distinction to the dilletante always respected his views. There 
are those who did not share his opinions on priority of nomen- 
clature, but none that know the intricacies of these questions 
will hesitate to admire or fear his wonderful erudition. As a 
historical botanist he ranks alone in America. 
