164 



On one of his excursions he discovered a beautiful valley about 

 forty miles from Silver City. His glowing account of it induced 

 some of. his friends to choose it as a camping place, and there 

 they were all murdered by Indians. Obviously, Dr. Greene 

 must have had his narrow escapes; sometimes, perhaps, when 

 he was quite unaw^are of the risks he was running. There is 

 doubtless much old correspondence extant from which more 

 details of these years of wandering may be gleaned. (His 

 friends are urged to communicate to the writer any material 

 which could fittingly be used in a more extended biographical 

 account which is in preparation.) 



A new phase of Greene's career opened in 1885, when he gave 

 up the ministry to become an instructor in botany at the Uni- 

 versity of California. He was now forty-two years of age. 

 Five years previously he had published his first botanical article, 

 but now, under more favorable conditions for literary work, his 

 development as a botanical author was very rapid. He had laid 

 well the foundations for productive scholarship, and before the 

 end of five years his publications had made him a factor to be 

 reckoned with in the botanical world. His six important papers 

 entitled "Studies in the Botany of California and Parts Adja- 

 cent" were the first noteworthy contributions to western botany 

 published in the west by a resident botanist. On account of 

 them the early volumes of the Bulletin of the California Academy 

 of Sciences are prized as records of lasting value. The final 

 paper of this series appeared in 1887, and in the same year was 

 begun the publication of "Pittonia, a series of papers relating to 

 botany and botanists." This publication, like several others 

 which followed it in the course of years, was privately printed. 

 Greene never grudged money which went to pay the printer. 

 If anyone bought his volumes, well and good. But if he did not 

 sell them directly, there was another and even more pleasing 

 way to realize upon his investment. Each year the foreign book 

 dealers with whom he dealt would sell a considerable number of 

 his volumes and give him credit, which he would use in the 

 addition of treasures to his library. 



Five volumes of Pittonia were published, two of them in 



