REMINISCENCES 
By HERBERT MCKENZIE DENSLOW 
The General Theological Seminary 
The Rev. Dr. Denslow spoke somewhat as follows: 
Mr. President and Fellow-Members of the Torrey Botanical 
Club: I am quite aware that I appear to-day as a relic. When I 
tell you that I attended early meetings of the Torrey Club while a 
school-boy in Brooklyn, you will readily understand that there will 
be little of scientific accuracy in my recollections of that distant 
time. That I was allowed to attend the meetings in the Her- 
barium at the School of Mines was due in part to the fact that my 
uncle, W. W. Denslow, was a member of the Club and in part to 
the great kindness of Dr. Torrey. I was present at the dinner on 
December 20, 1867, but I recall distinctly only that Dr. Gray was 
present, as well as Dr. Torrey, and that the occasion was most 
impressive to my boyish imagination. It was my first function 
of that sort and I probably exaggerate the number present; but my 
memory has always reported a long table and a goodly company. 
It is to my uncle that I owe my introduction to botany. I 
made many field-excursions with him and his friends and worked 
in holiday times on his herbarium. My beginnings of botanical 
knowledge were thus practical and concrete. Whether there is 
pedagogical suggestion in this, I do not assert. Probably a cer- 
tain intensity of interest and application, which is a family trait, 
contributed to my early enthusiasm. Certainly I gained а Ше- 
long interest in the study of plants; and this avocation has not 
only contributed much of pleasure but has helped distinctly in 
shaping my mental life. : 
It was for little more than three years that I was able to attend 
with some regularity the meetings of the Club. Then college life 
in New Haven, followed by teaching and professional study, kept 
me fully occupied elsewhere. I bound up my few volumes of the 
Bulletin and found scant time for botany. Still I continued to 
— a 
