GLEASON: CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE CLUB TO TAXONOMY :v) 



herbarium may be consulted by any person interested in the local flora, which 

 is almost completely represented. 



A botanical club, considered as a unit, can of course do no research, and 

 the Torrey Club has not employed taxonomists for research nor given grants 

 in support of it. Besides the two contributions to taxonomy which I have 

 already mentioned, is there any other way in which the Torrey Club can be or 

 has been of genuine service? There is a third way, which may not occur to 

 you immediately, in which the Club has been active, and through which, 

 measured by the extent and importance of the results, the Club has rendered 

 a highly valuable service, a service which has been partially outmoded by the 

 changed conditions of the twentieth century, but for which there is still an 

 opportunity and a demand. I refer to the encouragement and inspiration of 

 botanists. Botanists, like poets, are born, not made, but after birth they must 

 be developed. Today we have colleges and graduate schools for that purpose, 

 but such was scarcely the case in New York in the seventies and early eighties. 

 Even a formal education is not always sufficient. Probably every one of us 

 can look back to our earlier years and remember the inspiration which we 

 received from some one botanist, an inspiration which may have determined 

 us to become botanists rather than to enter some other profession. 



Obviously, the professional botanists of New York today were not made 

 into botanists because of the influence of the Torrey Club, nor do they remain 

 botanists for that reason. Conditions were difTerent sixty or seventy years 

 ago. when the death of Dr. Torrey left the Club without a leader and the 

 botanical interests of its members were kept alive largely through the encour- 

 agement of mutual contact, through the emulation of their fellow-members, 

 through the stimulation of new ideas, through the applause for the work 

 they accomplished. 



There are some professions which can easily demand one's full time, leaving 

 no opportunity for a hobby ; there are some which offer excellent opportunities 

 for productive research to those who are so minded. There are still others in 

 which the prospect of large financial gain acts as a stimulus to continuous 

 work. Financial success, once it has been attained, is also apt to lead one to 

 devote his leisure time to the more fashionable forms of pleasure. 



I shall cite to you five men who were trained and educated in a different 

 line, who earned their bread and butter in a different profession, whose interest 

 in botany was merely a young man's hobby, but who maintained this interest 

 throughout their life and in two instances finally made it their life's work. 

 One of these men had political advancement apparently within his reach, 

 but turned from it to enter botany at the bottom of the professional ladder. A 

 second had opportunity for research in a different subject. A third turned from 



