10 



The Club's formal organization was undertaken in 1867, and 

 its incorporation occurred four years later, under the name New 

 York Botanical Club, changed the following year to that which 

 it now bears. Within three years after its establishment the Club 

 began issuing a monthly publication, the Bulletin, since uninter- 

 ruptedly maintained. Its prefatory note declared its primary 

 object to be "to form a medium of communication for all those 

 interested in the Flora of this vicinity, and thus to bring together 

 and fan into a flame the sparks of botanical enthusiasm, at present 

 too much isolated. . . . We have chiefly in view the develop- 

 ment of a greater botanical interest in our neighborhood, and 

 found our hopes of success as much upon learners as upon the 

 learned." May I pause here to ask all those present to regard 

 this sentiment as that which actuates our Club to-day. There 

 have been unfortunate periods in our history when this funda- 

 mental principle has been lost sight of; when learned newcomers, 

 unfamiliar with our history and character, have assumed that we 

 existed for the learned only. Believe me that this spirit does not 

 exist to-day. We are most desirous that the knowledge should 

 go abroad that the Torrey Botanical Club exists and is maintained 

 for the most humble learners, equally with the learned, and our 

 invitation to membership is to-day most cordially extended to 

 everyone who desires either to assist in strengthening our influ- 

 ence, or to be assisted by us. 



In the further unfolding of its objects, the Bulletin uncon- 

 sciously states the object of the Club's organization : " An atten- 

 tive study of plants in their native haunts is essential to the 

 advance of the science, and in this respect the local observer has 

 an advantage over the explorer of extensive regions, or the pos- 

 sessor of a general herbarium. He can note the plant from its 

 cradle to its grave ; can watch its struggles for existence, its 

 habits, its migrations, its variations ; can study its atmospheric 

 and entomological economies ; can speculate on its relations to 

 the past, or experiment on its utility to man." Ecology is thus 

 clearly seen to be the object of study, notwithstanding that the 

 name of it was not generally discovered by our botanical fraternity 

 until about 1890, nor the active and merciless chase of the poor 



