GLEASON: CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE CLUB TO TAXONOMY 41 



In short, it was Bicknell, more than any other man of the period, who 

 returned taxonomy to the field and who re-opened the eastern states for 

 taxonomic research. In the great revival of taxonomy during the last quarter- 

 century, our own region has been found a fertile field for investigation. I do 

 not claim that Bicknell was directly responsible for this, but it is obvious that 

 he was followed, not preceded, by such similarly careful field men as Deam, 

 Stone. Wiegand, Marie-Victorin, and Fernald. The Torrey Club may well 

 be proud that it had a part in this development through its encouragement and 

 support of the work of the banker, Eugene Pintard Bicknell. 



The second man whom I shall mention was a successful lawyer, a promi- 

 nent judge in the New York courts, Addison Brown. He was a member of 

 the Torrey Club during the seventies, but being already established in his 

 profession he had less time and opportunity for field work. His botanical 

 work was chiefly centered on the collection of the various kinds of alien plants 

 which appeared on ballast dumps in the vicinity of New York City. His 

 few printed papers, published in the early volumes of the Bulletin, show that 

 he collected many rare or unusual plants, some of them previously unknown 

 in America. His collecting stations are now mostly covered with buildings 

 and ballast-dumps are a thing of the past, but his specimens, conserved in the 

 herbarium of the New York Botanical Garden, show that his results were 

 accurately reported. Judge Brown's contributions to botany were chiefly finan- 

 cial. It was he who assumed the financial responsibility for the publication 

 of Britton and Brown's Illustrated Flora, without which the work could never 

 have been issued. I believe that I am correct in saying that no single book 

 ever did as much as this to revive and stimulate interest in the native flora 

 of the northeastern states and that his willingness to underwrite it derived 

 from his faith in Britton and his personal interest in plants, for both of which 

 the Torrey Club is responsible. 



The third man w^as a geologist, who worked for a short time at mining and 

 then became a sanitary inspector for the City of New York. Interested in 

 politics, deeply concerned with all forms of civic improvement, he was soon 

 taking an active part in the affairs of the city and was appointed to several 

 city positions of increasing dignity and responsibility. In the middle of this 

 career he returned to science, which he had always followed as a hobby, entered 

 the graduate school, received his degree of doctor of philosophy, and became 

 one of the leading paleobotanists of America. Arthur Hollick's name and 

 reputation are familiar to all of us and many of us remember him personally, 

 so that further comment is unnecessary. 



The fourth man was also a geologist who, for some five years after the 

 completion of his work at Columbia College, was employed by the Geological 

 Survey of New Jersey. During this time he seldom missed a meeting of the 



