BOSTON SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 89 



connection, Mrs. Robert C. Waterston, sister of Mrs. Greene, embodied in a letter respecting 

 him. They were as follows : " Dr. Greene's studies at Litchfield were rather to acqxiire a 

 general knowledge of law than from an intention to pursue it as a profession, and his tastes 

 for natural history, especially botany, led him to turn his attention to medicine. To pur- 

 sue this study he went abroad and was a student in London, but more especially in Edin- 

 burgh, where he passed several years. Here he formed the acquaintance of men who 

 were afterwards widely known in their different departments. Among them was William 

 J. Hooker, afterwards Sir William Hooker, with whom a friendship arose which continued 

 through life. The intimacy was renewed on Mr. Greene's various visits to England and 

 Scotland ; a,nd always maintained by correspondence and the interchange of botanical 

 books and information, as well as by mutual expressions of lasting affection. 



" Mr. Greene's botanical studies greatly interested him both in Europe and America. 

 Forgetful of time and even of hunger, he would go out in the country in the morning and 

 not return until night, coming back laden with botanical boxes filled with specimens, and 

 then spend half the night in laying each in its separate papers with the careful and tender 

 touch peculiar to his hand. 



" Thus besides acquiring two professions, he gained a reputation as a botanist in the front 

 rank of that department of natural history. Added to these attainments he had com- 

 mand of several modern languages. He knew much and said little. Constitutionally 

 reserved and silent, it was impossible for him to impart what he had acquired. 



" Once only I heard him express a regret that fluency of speech or writing had been 

 denied to him. Few knew how richly his mind was stored on almost every subject. 

 His taste for the fine arts made him a just judge of both music and painting. Of pictures 

 he had a great love and knowledge. His ample fortune was the means, not only of adorn- 

 ing his own house with works of the old masters, and those of a more modern school, biit 

 also of encouraging and aiding many struggling workers in various departments of ' man's 

 endless toil and endeavor,' who but for him had been ' desolate and ojDpressed.' His 

 library was well chosen and filled, and there he loved to abide — and when at last he 

 passed on to wider regions of knowledge, the works on natural history as well as his 

 Herbarium were at his request transferred to the Boston Society of Natural History. 

 Mr. Greene's life was one quite aside from the hurry and self-assertion of American careers. 

 He possessed many qualities, which, had he practised the profession of medicine, would 

 have made him an able and certainly a beloved physician. His was the magnetic touch 

 of a born healer, and the strength and tenderness of his presence in the sick room was 

 of itself a restorative power. I knew well that character whose 'still waters ran deep.' 

 His low voice was seldom raised except to rebuke wrong, but the flash of his wrath was 

 all the more startling, because it so seldom fell from the calm and quiet sky of his serene 

 days. After he left us in 1862, I arranged at my sister's request a simple monument to 

 be placed over his resting place at Mount Auburn. An ivy plant climbs over the tablet 

 and half hides a cross on its summit, typifying that sincere faith and reverence which lay 

 in his soul, seldom outwardly revealed. To please a wish of my own heart there was cut 

 on- the marble the grass which was named for Mr. Greene, by Thos. Nuttall, when he dis- 

 covered it on the Western plains, the Greenia Arkansia." To this beautiful and just tribute 

 of one who knew more of Dr. Greene in his domestic life, than any other who has written 



