BRIEFER ARTICLES 
THOMAS JONATHAN BURRILL 
APRIL 25, 1839—-APRIL 14, 1916 
(WITH PORTRAIT) 
From the moment of recognition of “the new botany,” as one of them 
called it, three men of the middle west have stood out in prominence: 
Bra in Michigan, Bessey in Iowa and Nebraska, and BuRRILL in 
Illinois. Each has exercised an influence on American botany further 
reaching than those of their generation have recognized while it was 
active, and each has 
been a force outside the 
field of his chosen pro- 
fession. 
Professor BuRRILL 
was a microscopist, in 
the days when micro- 
scopy was finding itself. 
Only a few months ago 
we picked out the faces 
of the active workers 
in that near science as 
they appeared in a 
group photographed 
nearly. half a century 
ago. The museum of 
the University of 
Illinois devotes one 
wall case to a collection 
of the cheap micro- 
Scopes that enabled a 
young and poor insti- 
tution to show its students the things lying beyond the range of the 
hand lens, and the long tube binoculars: that made the smallest of 
living things visible to the investigator. It was thus natural that, 
while he knew the old botany, published a list of the higher plants of 
the State, and continued until his death impatient of a lessening ability 
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