153 



During the Civil War Greene served in the Union army as a 

 private. It is related that he carried in his knapsack a copy of 

 Wood's Classbook of Botany, and that whenever the exigencies 

 of campaigning permitted, he was busy collecling and deter- 

 mining plants. Mr. Tidestrom has told us that the young soldier 

 of nineteen made a collection of plants on the battlefield of 

 Fort Donelson, which was mounted in an album by his mother 

 and exhibited at a fair of the Sanitary Commission in Chicago. 

 It was sold for $50 and the proceeds used for the relief of sick 

 and wounded soldiers. 



After the war his botanical studies were continued earnestly 

 and he entered into correspondence with several prominent 

 botanists. I shall quote from his own manuscript, written, 

 apparently, about 1890. 



"My earliest botanical correspondence was with Professor 

 Alphonso Wood and Doctors Asa Gray, George Engelmann and 

 John Torrey. Between the years 1863 and 1867 I addressed 

 several notes of inquiry about plants to Professor Wood, re- 

 ceiving courteous and helpful replies; but these are long since 

 lost. The same fate has befallen two or three kindly communica- 

 tions from Asa Gray with which I was favored in 1869, while 

 studying somewhat carefully and critically the flora of central 

 Illinois. One of these was an unexpected note, along wath 

 which there was returned to me, through his hands, a piece of 

 manuscript which I had sent to the American Naturalist for 

 publication. The latter was to inform me that the article, on a 

 proposed new Tradescantia, had been submitted to him for 

 approval, and that he disapproved its publication ; that in Kunth's 

 Enumeratio more species of Tradescantia were credited to the 

 United States than he himself was able to distinguish. 



"To this communication I made a brief response, giving 

 further reasons for holding my plant thoroughly distinct from 

 Tradescantia virginica, with which he had always confused it. 

 To this he gave a brief answer, advising me, as I well remember, 

 though the letter is lost, to communicate with Doctor Engel- 

 mann on the subject of my proposed new Tradescantia, adding 

 that this botanist was more skillful than himself in detecting 

 specific characters. 



