HARPER: RECOLLECTIONS OF NEW YORK 101 



than on the members. There just occurs to me one particular in which the 

 Torrey Club has the advantage of the New England. The members do not 

 smoke during the meetings. [Perhaps on account of the presence of ladies, who 

 were — and I believe still are — barred from membership in the New England 

 Botanical Club. There were one or two, possibly more, tobacco addicts at this 

 meeting, but in those days no gentleman would have ventured to smoke in the 

 presence of ladies.] 



"Dr. Rusby, one of the vice presidents, presided, and Prof. Burgess (who 

 gets about a dozen species out of Aster macro phyllus) was (and is) secre- 

 tary. Judge Brown, the president [was absent]. . . . There were about 32 per- 

 sons at the meeting, about 11 of whom were women. . . . Mrs. Britton (who 

 by the way is the first female botanist I ever saw) was the only woman there 

 that I knew. 



"Among the men present were Dr. Britton (of course), Prof. Underwood, 

 Dr. Small, Dr. Howe, Dr. MacDougal, Prof. Porter, the veteran botanist of 

 Pennsylvania, Mr. A. A. Heller, the explorer of Hawaii, North Carolina, 

 Porto Rico, Texas, etc., Prof. [Francis E.] Lloyd, Mr. Cornelius Van Brunt, 

 an old gentleman whose name suggests his descent from the early Dutch 

 settlers, Mr. Hazen, the present Fellow in Botany, Mr. Griffiths, Mr. Banker, 

 and several others whom I did not know. Prof. Porter and myself were the 

 only members of the N. E. Bot. Club present, as far as I know. 



" . . . . This meeting was mostly devoted to reports of the excursions of 

 the club since its last meeting in May. They get up excursions to various points 

 within 50 miles or so about every week in the season. From these reports I 

 learned of a lot of interesting plants that grow around here. 



"Strange to say, the members do not seem to be at all familiar with the 

 Britton & Brown nomenclature. . . . 



"These meetings do not seem to be attended with as much interest and 

 importance as those of the N. E. Bot. Club, but this is probably due to their 

 greater frequency (twice a month for eight months in the year). . . . They 

 sometimes elect from ten to twenty new members at one meeting." 4 



Besides the botanists already mentioned, I have pleasant recollections of 

 the following met during my first year in New York, at the Garden, Columbia 

 University, the Torrey Club meetings, or elsewhere : — Dr. T. F. Allen, Rev. 

 L. T. Chamberlain, Rev. L. H. Lighthipe, Dr. H. M. Richards, Dr. J. N. 

 Rose of the National Herbarium, and Mr. R. S. Williams. 5 Others equally 



4 For an official account of this meeting see Bull. Torrey Bot. Club, 26: 639-641. De- 

 cember, 1899. 



5 It may be worth noting here that although the beard fashion had declined from its 

 mid-19th century peak, about half the men mentioned in this article wore beards, and 

 about half the remainder had mustaches. 



Only a few of them are now living. Sketches of many of them can be found in "Who 

 Was Who" Of 25 persons mentioned in this paper (not all of them botanists, though, nor 



