110 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIX. No. 994 



the alpine heights he is no stranger. Could he 

 leave his more serious tasks long enough he would 

 hasten to greet the floral friends of that earlier 

 day as well as to renew his fatherly interest in 

 the hundreds of plant children of his maturer 

 years. When Edward L. Greene first began 

 tramping over the plains, racing through the val- 

 leys or eagerly climbing the unknown heights of 

 Colorado and Wyoming your speaker was still a 

 small boy on an Iowa brush farm. Little did I 

 then think as, plowing corn with old Dobbin, I 

 stopped to pick the cockle-burs from between the 

 toes of my bare feet, that some day I too should 

 be vitally interested in. strange and beautiful 

 plants in a, to me, unknown land. But to my 

 friend and teacher (for such I count him in the 

 largest and best sense) they had even then be- 

 come of absorbing interest. He was gathering 

 specimens in order that he might know the splendid 

 treasures that greeted him at every turn. 



"This man, a missionary, in rounding up and 

 corraling for a life of decency and usefulness, the 

 cowboys of the then 'wild and wooUy' west, 

 traveled far and wide. He sought men in the 

 open marts and plants in their secluded nooks. 

 The offerings he brought back to the altar were 

 both acceptable, but may it not be that, reversing 

 the order of that primal day, the flowers and 

 fruits of the field yielded more acceptable incense 

 than the firstlings of the floek? I imagine that as 

 the years sped by, he more and more taught men 

 of the wisdom and goodness of the Creator through 

 the marvelous adaptations and beauty of the flora. 



' ' As preaching is teaching and teaching is 

 preaching, so the transition to the professor's 

 chair was an easy one. During the years as they 

 were slipping along, his field of observation wid- 

 ened, his knowledge of plants and their characters 

 deepened, and his theory of the principles of classi- 

 fication ripened. Thus he has gradually been 

 brought into the zenith of his power. Plants from 

 the east and the west, from the north and the south 

 have passed under his observation, but no field 

 has received such discriminating scrutiny as the 

 Eocky Mountains. He knows this field piecemeal; 

 he knows it as a whole. 



"And what a flora it is! Some of the states 

 have singly almost as many species as the whole 

 empire east of the Missouri. Environments of 

 greatest diversity as to soil character, water con- 

 tent, heat and light factors, and all these interact- 

 ing upon each other as they are successively modi- 

 fied by altitudes varyiug from near sea-level to 



alpine heights have given a flora that is marvelous 

 in its complexity. Near relatives of species well 

 fixed under normal and uniform conditions seem 

 here to have been thrown into such a state of 

 'wobble' that new forms appear to have arisen 

 over night. Multitudinous variations, more or less 

 well fijxed, crowd upon each other everywhere. 

 Decry species-making as you will, in the west na- 

 ture seems to have been working overtime at this 

 very thing and in a very abandon of joy. Then 

 why should not her greater children who have the 

 eyes to see and the mind with which to discern 

 read and record the results? 



"In this work Dr. Greene holds and has long 

 held an enviable place. The intimate field knowl- 

 edge of the earlier decades of his career forms 

 the basis for the discriminating work that is now 

 the marvel and the despair of those of us who have 

 drunk less deeply at the Pierian spring. As we 

 note his facile pen, the classical clearness, brev- 

 ity and exactness of his diction, the rapier-like 

 thrusts of his criticism, that cut but carry no tox- 

 ins, one can not help feeling that for a botanist 

 to know little Latin and less Greek is a misfor- 

 tune — nay almost a crime. Sometimes such an 

 one must wonder whether 



' 'Twere better to have loved and lost 

 Than never to have loved at all.' 



"For our crass ignorance he has scourged us 

 again and again. Though the lash may 'cut to 

 the quick' yet by these stripes are we being 

 healed. They were never meant to drive a man 

 from the field simply because he is a beginner. 

 Dr. Greene always has a word of encouragement 

 for him who enters Flora's temple to worship in 

 the right spirit. He manifests no desire to pre- 

 empt the place and the 'divine right' of the king 

 is not engraved upon his banner. 



"That other eyes fail to see the things that he 

 sees; that even from similar observations differ- 

 ent judgments are formed and different conclu- 

 sions drawn are not to him of such serious moment 

 that each may not go on with friendship for the 

 other, each cultivating his own wee bit of the ever- 

 widening field. To live honestly with nature, to 

 deal justly with your fellow worker, to love mercy 

 is a creed to which we can all subscribe. Were 

 this not true and generally practised, few there 

 be that would dare to follow nature in her devious 

 paths. No single mind can grasp all her secrets. 

 Truth is always truth but she is many-sided. No 

 one pair of eyes can view her from all sides at any 

 one time. A partial truth may in effect, there- 



