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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVII. No. 942 



and afterwards given by Professor Gibbs 

 to Gray as of historical as well as botanical 

 interest. It was the duty of the athletes 

 while the attention of the instructor was 

 diverted to seize the trunk and carry it to 

 the entry and later on to start it rolling 

 down the very winding staircase. This 

 method of studying botany I discovered 

 later was not confined to Harvard. Once 

 while visiting a western university I no- 

 ticed, to my surprise, a cannon ball back of 

 a door. I asked why it was there and was 

 told, not by a student, but by the instructor 

 himself, that during the lectures the stu- 

 dents rolled it along to the head of the 

 staircase when gravity was left to do its 

 perfect work. Afterwards some attention 

 was paid to the lecturer, and how much 

 was learned on any one day depended on 

 how early in the hour the cannon ball was 

 started on its way. Compulsory botany 

 was not a success. In my junior year eight 

 or ten students who really wished to study 

 botany asked Gray to give them some in- 

 struction in systematic botany during the 

 season when fresh material could be ob- 

 tained. The work on our part was entirely 

 voluntary and in addition to our regular 

 work. It was not recognized by the college 

 and we received no credit for it in the rank 

 list. The number of voluntary workers 

 was reduced to two in my senior year, when 

 we had so much regular work as to leave 

 almost no spare time. I have noticed in re- 

 cent years a growing disposition to demand 

 some reward in the shape of a degree or a 

 certificate of some kind for any work done 

 outside the regular curriculum. To do 

 work for the pleasure of adding to one's 

 knowledge is, I regret to say, getting to be 

 a sign that one is not up to date. 



On graduating I followed Gray's advice 

 and entered the medical school, hoping 

 sooner or later to be able to return to bot- 

 any. The opportunity came in 1870 when 



Gray returned from Europe. During his 

 absence Horace Mann, Jr., who had been 

 taking his place, died and I was then ap- 

 pointed assistant. I was always interested 

 in cryptogams and, had it been possible for 

 me to do as I pleased, I should never had 

 studied anything but max'ine alg^ during 

 the rest of my life. It became my duty to 

 arrange the thallophytes of the Gray Her- 

 barium and the work I did was radical, I 

 assure you. Not knowing that Littleton 

 Island was near the North Pole, but sup- 

 posing it to be somewhere in Long Island, 

 I arranged into the waste-paper basket a 

 number of rather shabby-looking algee 

 which I afterwards discovered to my mor- 

 tification were very rare. It did not take 

 long for me to find out that, whatever pro- 

 fessors of pedagogy may say, one can not 

 teach a subject without knowing something 

 about it. But where was I to go to study 

 cryptogams? It was proposed that I 

 should study fungi with M. A. Curtis, but 

 he died in 1872. For marine algse I had 

 to depend on Harvey's "Nereis" and J. G. 

 Agardh's "Species," works which were 

 not easily followed by a beginner, with 

 occasional reference to the by no means 

 exhilarating "Micrographic Dictionary." 

 Evidently, I must go to Europe, and Ger- 

 many was the country whose universities 

 offered the greatest facilities for my pur- 

 pose. The most promising were those of 

 Strassburg, where De Bary was professor, 

 and Wuerzburg, where was Sachs. I chose 

 the former rather at a venture. The 

 other botanists there were Solms and 

 Pr. Schmitz, then a very young man whose 

 work had been in histology. The vener- 

 able W. P. Schimper, the bryologist and 

 paleontologist, whose valuable herbariiun 

 had been given to the university before the 

 Franco-German war, remained in charge 

 of it and gave a course of lectures. My 

 fellow students were Stahl, Rostafinski, 



