Daniel Cady Eaton. 187 
and as fondly cherished as if it were a precious work of art. 
His library was rich in rarities, and undoubtedly the fullest in 
the country in the literature of ferns. He was emphatically a 
student of plants and his zeal and pleasure in their study was 
enhanced by his strong love of nature. He loved a plant 
because it was a plant, and he saw beauty as well as interest in 
its every feature and organ. The writer long ago came to the 
opinion that Professor Eaton had chosen his specialty largely 
because of the intrinsic beauty of the plants of those orders. 
The delight with which he would call attention to the special 
beauty of the foliage of some moss under the microscope, or 
the delicate tracery of some fern indicated the pleasure their 
contemplation and study afforded him. They had to him not 
merely a scientific interest, studied for description and classifi- 
cation, but he contemplated them also with much the pleasure- 
able emotion that an artist contemplates a great painting or 
statue, as an object of beauty. Some species he seemed to 
regard much as other persons regard pets, whose very presence 
was a pleasure to him. Representations of the walking fern 
and the climbing fern embellished his study, and one of the 
first botanical walks the writer had with him was to a locality 
near New Haven where the walking fern grew. 
In technical descriptions his style was clear, and in popular 
writing it was smooth and genial. It was his aim to so write 
that there might be no misunderstanding as to what he meant. 
His carefulness in this matter may be illustrated by a remark 
he once made to the writer: “I never send a telegram that I 
cannot parse.” But careful as he was as to style, language 
was to him but an instrument, and he was strongly on the con- 
servative side in the revolution that is being attempted in 
botanical nomenclature. Botany was to him a study of plants, 
not a quibble over names. When a plant had long been 
known by some botanical name under which it had been 
most studied and by which it was generally known in speech 
and in literature, he decidedly objected to changing that name 
merely to satisfy some newly made and arbitrary rule. 
Language in its growth and use had heretofore refused to be 
so fettered, and he believed that the slight gain which might 
arise by strictly following the newly proposed rules would not 
compensate for the loss that he thought would come by the 
additional confusion introduced into botanical literature, and 
the unsettling of what was sufficiently established for practical 
use. If there was a more cordial agreement between the 
American and European botanists he would accept it although 
regretfully, but as the matter actually stood, he resisted the 
change. 
Other than as incident to his scientific work, Professor 
Eaton published but little of what is usually termed “ popular” 
