250 



clergyman in the Episcopal Church and from 1885 to 1895 he 

 was professor of botany in the University of California, and from 

 1895 to 1904 at the Catholic University of America. He became 

 connected with the Smithsonian Institution in 1904. Perhaps 

 Dr. Greene was best known as the author of a book of which, 

 unfortunately, he had published only the first volume, the " Land- 

 marks of Botanical History." Easily the best classical scholar 

 among contemporary botanists, he brought to this book a certain, 

 fluent and delightful style. The combination of such broad 

 scholarship and the attractive presentation of his subject makes it 

 difficult to speak with restraint of a work that has already become 

 a classic. His great activity in taxonomic botany, extending 

 over many years, has added an enormous number of species of 

 plants as known to him and his associates and described in 

 Pittonia and Leaflets, both of which he fathered. In his early 

 days he led a romantic and often dangerous life as a missionary 

 in the far west and southwest. During this period, in which he 

 made very long excursions, he collected thousands of specimens 

 and acquired a field knowledge of plants that few modern 

 botanists can equal. 



