40 T O R R E Y A 



his original profession into botany before he was thirty. Two achieved financial 

 independence and still remained botanists by avocation. 



Surely 'there was a cause for this continued interest in plants, and I fail 

 to find any plausible cause other than the factor of encouragement and inspira- 

 tion received through the Torrey Botanical Club. Then, when you hear the 

 results achieved by these men. when you realize the part they have played 

 in the de^-elopment of American taxonom}' and in the provision of taxonomic 

 opportunity for others, you will agree that the most important contribution 

 A-et made by the Torrey Club has been the inspiration and encouragement of 

 these men and of others ^-hom I have not time to mention. The live are suffi- 

 cient to demonstrate my point. 



Eugene P. Bicknell. as a boy. was an amateur ornithologist and began 

 publishing in that subject at the early age of eighteen. As a man. he was a 

 banker. It was undoubtedly his membership in the Torrey Club and the stim- 

 ulus which he derived from it that gradually converted him into a clever 

 botanist. He was an exceedingly careful and discriminating observer of plants 

 in the held, and the bulk of his published work deals entirely with his field 

 studies. He was among the first to take his taxonomy into the field and to 

 base his conclusions primarily on his personal observations and only second- 

 arily on herbarium material. Do not understand from this statement that all 

 his taxonomic predecessors had been exclusively herbarium botanists ; nothing- 

 would be farther from the truth. But, in general, they had formed their ideas 

 first in the herbarium and then substantiated them in the field, while Bicknell 

 reversed the procedure. 



His results were astonishing. Right here in the vicinity of X'ew York, where 

 botanical work had been carried on for a century, he began to discover unde- 

 scribed species. Eastern botanists were surprised to learn, through his careful 

 field work, that there were more than one species of Helianthemiim in the 

 vicinity. The common black snakeroot had always been referred to a single 

 species, or to a species and a variety, and Bicknell showed conclusively that 

 there were four. ScropJiularia had held a single species in the eastern states, 

 and here he found a second. Agrimonia had long contained onh^ two accepted 

 species ; Bicknell's careful field study showed several others. In rapid succes- 

 sion he turned his attention to other genera. Car ex. Sisyriiichiitm, Lechca, 

 Asaruni, Tciicriuui. Riibits, Rosa, and various grasses, and in every case his 

 detailed and complete observations threw new light on their taxonomy. In 

 Rubus in particular, he early pointed out that tlie characters of the micro- 

 species of blackberries are of a different nature from those of the hawthorns, 

 and this observation, based on field study alone, is now being confirmed by 

 cvtogfenetics. 



