54 - T O R R E Y A 



the same letter Torrey also says' that he had scarceh- seen more than the covers 

 of the book and that he was interrupted before he had finished the first page ; 

 and this first page begins with Eaton's castigation of Torrey, my quoted 

 passage : "Since Dr. Faustus first exhibited his printed bibles in the year 1463, 

 no book has, probably, excited such consternation and "dismay as Dr. Torre^^'s 

 edition -of Lindley's Introduction to the Natural System of Botany." I am 

 afraid that the dear lady didn't read this preface, for under the circumstances 

 Torrey's statement to De Schweinitz can only be interpreted as sarcastic 

 and ironic, as far as a gentle soul like John Torrey could be ironic and sar- 

 castic, certainly not as '"effusive" praise ! The relationships between Eaton and 

 Torrey had their ups and downs. Clearly we do not have to confine our reading 

 to the opinions of modern botanists to learn just how certain individuals judge 

 their contemporaries, for throughout botanical history individuals have not 

 hesitated to say just what they thought about the work of this or that author. 

 In the constant quibbles that one notes in taxonomic literature one is reminded 

 of a remark ascribed to President Lowell when some acute problem regarding 

 the interrelationships of certain prima donnas among Harvard botanists 

 needed to be settled : "What is it about the pretty little flowers that makes the 

 botanists quarrel so much among themselves?" 



AMthin a decade or two from the time that Eaton castigated Torrey for his 

 progressiveness, the Linnaean system of classification was entirely outmoded 

 and abandoned, and was replaced by the natural system that he so violently 

 condemned. Eaton, the non-progressive botanist is, as a botanist, only a vague 

 memory among the devotees of this science today. But Torrey, who was the 

 subject of his scorn, forged steadily ahead to become the outstanding American 

 botanist of his time ; and this organization, the Torrey Botanical Club, the old- 

 est botanical association in America, today celebrating the seventy-fifth anni- 

 versary of its establishment, honors John Torrey's name, and its founders 

 incidentally honored the organization itself, in the selection of its name, a 

 perpetual reminder of the services rendered b}^ this outstanding individual and 

 botanist. Had Torrey been another Eaton, clearly there never would have been 

 a Torrey Botanical Club. 



Because of the vast number of organisms that the naturalist must deal with 

 as to species, to say nothing of higher categories such as genera and families, 

 it is clear that it is impossible to arrange large groups in any lineal arrange- 

 111 cut that will show all natural relationships. This is particularly true of the 

 major groups. We may follow^ the Bentham and Hooker system for convenience, 

 treating in sequence first the dicotyledonous plants, then the gymnosperms, and 

 then the monocotj'ledonous groups, although this is a very unnatural arrange- 

 ment because the gymnosperms are infinitely more primitive, among the flow- 



5 Mem. Torn Bot. Club 16: 280. 1921. 



