54 



value, were largely due to his influence. Mr. Canby was an 

 earnest member of the Republican party, though never narrow 

 or partisan in these relations. 



It is not a very rare occurrence for active business men also to 

 pursue some scientific avocation with activity and success ; but 

 it must always be regarded as remarkable that one with such 

 numerous and varied interests in financial, religious, charitable 

 and social life, and in city government, and who devoted to them 

 all sufificient time and energy to have left a strong impress upon 

 them, should have also found time to perform the vast amount 

 of herbarium work for which Mr. Canby was noted. 



As a botanist, Mr. Canby was a contemporary, and an honored 

 correspondent and beloved associate, of Torrey, Gray, Watson, 

 Engelmann, Thurber, Sullivant, Porter, Traill Green, Vasey, 

 Hall, Bebb and many others of their day, and he was a typical 

 representative of their school. For most of these men. Botany, 

 so far as their active interest in it extended, meant the accumula- 

 tion of a herbarium and the study of generic and specific relation- 

 ships. The amazing activity of the last quarter of a century in 

 the investigation of plant anatomy, morphology, physiology and 

 chemistry, could scarcely have been conceived of by them, and 

 those who, like Mr. Canby, lived to witness it, were not qualified, 

 either by taste or training, to participate in it. To these men, 

 moreover, Gray's Manual represented about the exact facts of 

 their science, so far as the local flora was concerned. That the 

 systematic botany of that day was radically wrong in its concep- 

 tion of specific limits ; that every township abounded in valid 

 species which had been loosely aggregated with others ; that 

 Gray's Manual required expanding by about twenty per cent., 

 and Chapman's by fifty : arc ideas which would have been 

 scouted by mo.st of them, were, indeed, almost bitterly resented 

 by some, upon the merest suggestion. Yet the general correct- 

 ness of this modern view is now recognized by nearly all, and 

 Mr. Canby had been able, before his death, largely to accept it. 

 It is upon the basis of the then prevailing views that his herbar- 

 ium-work must be judged ; and it can be said that he was accus- 

 tomed to notice and to note the forms, though he did not fly in 

 the face of prevailing cu.stom in their interpretation. 



