98 TORREYA 



two or three times, and met Dr. B. L. Robinson, M. L. Fernald, and Dr. J. M. 

 Greenman. 



In the Torrey Bulletin I had been especially thrilled by Dr. John K. 

 Small's articles on plants of the southeastern states, some of which I already 

 knew. I had brought with me to New York for identification some of the 

 plants I had collected in 1895-97, one of which turned out to be undescribed, 

 and was named within a year (Scirpus georgianus) . 



At the time of my arrival in New York both undergraduate and graduate 

 work in botany were carried on in Schermerhorn Hall, which looked about 

 the same as today, externally at least, though it was not then so closely crowded 

 by other buildings. Prof. L. M. Underwood was head of the department, and 

 two graduate students, Howard J. Banker and David Griffiths, were working 

 on fungi in an office next to his. Two other graduate students. Tracy E. Hazen 

 and J. E. Kirk wood, were somewhere around the place, but I saw them less 

 often. 



The main building of the New York Botanical Garden was not quite com- 

 pleted, but the herbarium and exhibits were being moved into it, and it was 

 opened to the public the following March. Dr. N. L. Britton, the director, 

 Dr. Small and Mr. George V. Nash, head gardener, had already established 

 homes near there, and they and Dr. P. A. Rydberg and a few others were on 

 the grounds much of the time, getting things in order. 



Dr. M. A. Howe, then curator of the Columbia herbarium, took me out 

 to the Garden for my first visit on October 2. When we called on Dr. Britton, 

 we found him and Mr. Nash making a list of plants in the Garden that 

 had been killed by a freeze the night before. Somewhere in the wooded part 

 of the grounds, in or near the hemlock grove, Dr. Howe showed me how 

 the ripe fruits of Polygonum virginianum jump several feet from the plant 

 when loosened by a touch ; something I had never seen before. 3 (That dis- 

 tinguishes it sharply from typical Polygonum, and amply justifies its treat- 

 ment by Small as a distinct genus.) The director's office was then temporarily 

 in a two-story wooden building, a former residence, on the other side of the 

 railroad, and plants were being mounted there. I believe it was there that I 

 met Willard N. Clute and Percy Wilson not long afterward. 



On account of my limited botanical training Prof. Underwood advised 

 me to take an undergraduate laboratory course in elementary botany, under 

 Dr. C. C. Curtis, who was then tutor in botany at Columbia, and had written 

 a text-book on the subject, which we used. So I spent a few hours a week in 

 his laboratory. There I learned something about microscopes, plant anatomy, 

 etc., but the course did not interest me much. The text-books of those days 



3 Apparently the first satisfactory explanation of this phenomenon is that by Reed and 

 Smoot in the Torrey Bulletin for July, 1906. There is also a short note on the subject by 

 George T. Hasting in Torreya for December, 1932 (p. 169). 



