162 



attested. Yet it must not be forgotten that the fundamental 

 conceptions ,of the two men in regard to species were absolutely 

 unlike. Gray was extremely conservative; Greene was from 

 his youth an American Jordan. For fifteen years, however, he 

 deferred to the views of the older botanist, at least as far as 

 publication was concerned. During this period, he tells us, the 

 numerous new species which he collected, "in as far as published 

 at all, had been published in the main by Asa Gray; this also 

 not so much by sending him new types as by indicating the char- 

 acters of species long in his possession, but wrongly placed by 

 him because of his failure to see the characters." 



The restraint imposed upon the younger botanist during this 

 time may not have been wholly unfortunate for the cause of 

 science. If we call to mind the case of his Tradescantia, we recog- 

 nize, on the one hand, Greene's keenness of perception and ac- 

 curacy of observation in pointing out the distinctness of the 

 plant which is now kept up in our books as T. brevicaulis Rafi- 

 nesque. We must admit, on the other hand, that Gray was quite 

 justified in calling to Greene's attention his lack of knowledge 

 of the literature of the subject. Early repression of his desire 

 to publish only intensified Greene's ambition to possess biblio- 

 graphical knowledge and facilities which should be second to 

 none. We all know how this ambition was realized, for it was 

 he who really introduced into America ideals of sound scholarship 

 in the historical phases of systematic botany. His erudition in 

 everything that concerned the older botanists was profound. 

 The value of his precept and example in this field it would be 

 hard to overestimate. 



Greene wrote in 1910: " I shall never be chargeable with hav- 

 ing been premature in making my beginnings at authorship on 

 Rocky Mountain botany. To the study of this flora and other 

 more or less related floras, to the eastward, westward and south- 

 ward of it, I had devoted sixteen years; and a very considerable 

 part of the knowledge gained so laboriously and devotedly, I 

 had given to another to publish as his own. I was already 

 forty-two years old and more, when, in 1885, I published my 

 own first paragraph of new Colorado botany." 



