BRIEFER ARTICLES 
JOSEPH YOUNG BERGEN 
(WITH PORTRAIT) 
There are many ways of advancing science, and hardly less signifi- 
_ cant than the investigator is he who makes men wish to investigate. 
Unquestionably no small number of those who have advanced botany 
have come to it with an inclination formed before university days, and 
he who set their compass was often one of those wise enthusiasts who 
guided their first steps in science. 
If we should take into account this service alone, American botany 
would acknowledge its debt to JosepH YouNG BERGEN, who died at his 
home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 10, 1917. He was 
born February 22, 1851, at Rye Beach, Maine, his family moving in 
1855 to Peoria, Illinois, where for some years the family home was 
beautifully situated on the bluffs outside the city. Here the nature- 
loving parents were accustomed to take their children on pleasant 
country trips to gather flowers, fruits, or nuts, according to the season. 
This home influence was strengthened for our future botanist by an 
intimate acquaintance with Dr. Stewarp, an old-time physician of 
Peoria, who took the lad, on many of his professional drives into the 
surrounding country. This amateur botanist watched the progress 
of growing things along the roadside, and new or especially interesting 
plants found their way into the doctor’s buggy for more careful inspec- 
tion at his leisure. ; 
Although the boy was prepared for college chiefly by home study, 
he had some time in the grammar and high schools in Peoria and two 
years in the old academy at Pembroke, New Hampshire. In due course 
he went to Antioch College in southern Ohio, that small but memorable 
institution whose first president was Horace Mann, of well known 
influence in the educational world. It is probable that at Antioch he 
received that bent toward geology which led to his first scientific 
work, done in connection with the Ohio State Geological Survey. Later 
he made practical application of his geological and chemical training 
in dealing with the problems of lead and zinc mining at Joplin, 
Missouri. 
455] [Botanical Gazette, vol. 66 
