WILLIAM RUSSEL DUDLEY 



[An address delivered at the services held in the University Chapel of 

 Stanford University, September 10, 1911.] 



By John Casper Branner, Vice-President 



1 DOUBT if there is any time in men's lives when they come to know each 

 other as well as they do in their college days, especially when they 

 happen to have the same studies, to be in the same classes, and to 

 be much thrown together by any circumstances whatever. 



Professor Dudley and I belonged to the class of 1874 in Cornell, we 

 had some of the same studies, we belonged to the same fraternity, and as 

 students we had about the same ups and downs. Aside from these mutual 

 interests we were thrown together still more by the fact that Dudley, 

 being a student in the scientific course, had botany in the early part of his 

 studies, while I in the course in Greek and Latin took botany near the 

 end of my college work, and so it came about that in our senior year he 

 was instructor in botany and I was his pupil. 



As enthusiastic students and as intimate friends we tramped together 

 every hill, explored every gorge and penetrated every swamp for many 

 miles around Ithaca. Under his guidance I came to have a personal 

 acquaintance with and affection for every flowering plant of the region 

 about Cayuga Lake, and for Dudley always a deeper love and a greater 

 esteem. 



The first piece of scientific work I ever did — a study of the fibro- 

 vascular bundles in the palms — was undertaken and carried through under 

 his guidance. 



On the slopes of the hills west of Ithaca it was he who pointed out 

 to me for the first time the deep marks cut in the hard rocks by the ice 

 of the glacial epoch. Thus Dudley was not only my first and principal 

 instructor in botany, but he was also, in a way, my first effective instructor 

 in geology. 



We college professors are more or less given to the discussion of methods 

 of instruction, and it is no uncommon thing to hear this or that man's 

 methods found fault with. I dare say such criticisms are well enough in 

 their way, but after all is said and done there remains one supreme test 

 of a teacher that is often lost sight of in these discussions, and that is 

 his results. I do not speak with a knowledge of the precise number of 

 his students who stand to-day in the front rank of our botanists, but my 

 general impression is that, judged by this standard — ^by results with his 



