XXV 



custom, even if not in the real character of the organization. It has 

 therefore within the past year become the Staten Island Association of 

 Arts and Sciences. This is only a change of name. We have known 

 of other things very dear to us that changed their names, but we loved 

 them none the less. There is no suggestion of anything effeminate in 

 this mere change of name. This organization now begins to take on 

 the complexion of the arts as well as the sciences, which seems to be a 

 wholesome infection resulting from municipal contact. It will not les- 

 sen our powers and it may bring some desirable support. Our happi- 

 ness by any other name would seem as complete, and so it is not of 

 the name, nor of this minor change that we think when we meet to- 

 night to realize that we are brought together by an instinct of twenty- 

 five years in the search for knowledge of what nature and history 

 brought to the locality in which it is our good fortune to live. 



One does not like to single out the ones from the many in an associ- 

 ation where all are equal and where rank and caste are unknown, but it 

 would seem inappropriate to pass this milestone in our history without 

 mentioning a few of the men who have so constantly and faithfully 

 performed the real work with the real interest which made this associ- 

 ation what it is. 



First in the inception of the Association, ever constant in its support, 

 and still active in its welfare, are Arthur Hollick, William T. Davis» 

 and Nathaniel L. Britton, each of whom has made a mark in science 

 deeper than our local interests can claim. 



Dr. Britton is well known as one of the most active and advanced of 

 botanists, standing in the front rank of his profession; who found every- 

 thing on Staten Island that the rest of us have not since found, and re- 

 garding whom we have but one regret, which is that he has had to 

 largely leave us for the broader field of the Botanical Garden of 

 the Bronx; yet he keeps his picturesque, ever quaint, summer home by 

 the sea at New Dorp. 



Dr. Hollick has likewise wandered northward to the bowers of the 

 Bronx by way of Columbia University, yet with no relinquishing of his 

 activity in the Staten Island field. He has been a large contributor 

 and the patient and ever faithful secretary of the Association, who has 

 done what perhaps no one else could or would have done to preserve 

 the integrity of our Proceedings under all circumstances for a quarter 

 of a century, and whose scientific writings are too well known else- 

 where to require special reference to his large contributions to our 

 pages. 



Then "Willie" Davis, whom every one knows as a naturalist— the 

 born naturalist of Staten Island— than whom there never has been and 



