1897.] Scientific News. 921 
the direction of the Harvard Faculty, and in 1892 received the degree 
of Sc. D. from his alma mater. This same year he spent three months 
in Jamaica collecting botanical material. He then went to Germany 
where he studied until 1894 under Professor Edouard Strasburger at 
Bonn. Upon his return to America he was made a fellow in the 
Johns Hopkins University, and the next year received an appoint- 
ment as lecturer in botany in that institution. This present year he 
was advanced to the position of associate professor of botany. In early 
June, he sailed with a party of Johns Hopkins students to Jamaica, 
where the Johns Hopkins marine laboratory was established for the sum- 
mer. The work was most successful and Professor Humphrey obtained 
some most important material upon the embryology of the palms and of 
ginger. On August 12 he was taken sick, but his condition was not 
considered at all serious until the 17th, when he rapidly grew worse, 
dying the same day of pernicious malarial fever. 
Early in his botanical career, Dr. Humphrey became interested in 
the study of the Algae, and his first published paper (his thesis for the 
degree of S. B.) was on the development of the frond of Agarum tur- 
neri, in which he explained the method by which the peculiar perfora- 
tions found in that species are formed. 
Upon his removal to Indiana and later to Amherst, it became neces- 
sary to pay especial attention to the fungi, and more particularly to 
those which cause plant diseases. His reports as botanist to the Am- 
herst Experimental Station include valuable papers on the black-knot 
of the plum, on diseases of cucumbers and potatoes, and on other kin- 
dred diseases. More important and more elaborate than: these was his 
dissertation for the doctor’s degree, a monograph of the Saprolegniacez, 
which will long remain a classic upon this subject. 
Naturally, upon his introduction to Strasburger’s laboratory, his 
studies took a cytological turn and his several papers upon the cell and 
cell-contents were published in the Berichte of the German Botanical 
Society and in the Annals of Botany. For many years he furnished 
abstracts of American botanical work for the Botanische Centralblatt, 
and he also translated and edited Zimmermann’s “ Botanical Micro- 
technique.” 
Personally, Dr. Humphrey was straightforward and outspoken, and 
little inclined to tolerate what seemed to him inferior work. The work 
he had already done showed what might have been expected of him in 
the future, connected with a university with whose scientific staff he 
was in full sympathy, and upon whose students his enthusiasm and his 
sincerity were already producing happy results. He was very optimis- 
