1922.] ANNUAL DINNER FOR 1914 73 



and climb to the gallery. At one end you would see Dr. Kellogg in 

 his shirt sleeves and his old red flannel waistcoat, making drawings 

 of twigs. He would lay the twigs down on the table, and over them 

 he placed a sheet of glass, and over that a piece of transfer paper, 

 and very slowly, very deliberately, and very patiently he would 

 trace out the drawings of these plants. I do not know how many he 

 had. He must have had a great many, and most of them were 

 destroyed at the time of the great earthquake I suppose. How was 

 that, Dr. Jepson? [Dr. Jepson: Yes, they were all destroyed.] Then 

 there was Mr. Harford who worked with Dr. Kellogg more or less. 

 The herbarium which they had was not very extensive, and more 

 or less the work of Kellogg and Harford. However, they had the 

 best collection of books and the best collection of plants on the 

 coast, and it was very interesting for anyone who cared for plants 

 to go up there and see what there was. That was the botanical 

 center then. One goes to the universities now. I believe that the 

 Department of Botany in the University of California is dissatis- 

 fied by not having a building of its own, but it seems to me the men 

 are very finely conditioned. They have a fine collection of plants 

 and plenty of books. I can find almost any book there I chance 

 to need. Then there are visiting botanists working there much of 

 the time. Anyway there is this that they have in common with 

 the old days — the kindly generous spirit which they show to 

 visitors, throwing open their herbarium and their library and 

 assisting them in every way that they can — the same spirit that 

 was in that little gallery over at San Francisco. 



Now I said it was very encouraging, most encouraging to you 

 ladies and gentlemen, to have the spirit of numbers. It is all very well 

 to talk about holding communion with nature alone, but it seems 

 to me that is not the case to which the old proverb refers — that two 

 are company and three are none. It seems to me a matter of great 

 importance — this spirit of numbers — and that is one of the dis- 

 advantages in living away from a botanical center. I have been per- 

 haps more fortunate in the place in which I reside than I might 

 have been had I resided elsewhere. I live at a place which is really 

 a very interesting natural botanical center. We are within a couple 

 of hours of the seashore and within a short distance of the desert 

 and we have, immediately overhanging the San Bernardino valley, 

 mountains 12,000 feet high. Thus we have all kinds of vegetation 

 and thereby this region attracts botanists, and so I have had the 

 pleasure of seeing there a great many botanists who have come to 

 visit my region; first, perhaps, Dr. Asa Gray, a botanist of America 

 whose work is at the foundation of all systematic botany in this 

 country. Dr. Gray made two visits to California as you are all 

 probably aware. The time I saw him was at the second visit and he 

 was then some sixty-five or seventy years old, and was not feeling 

 very well. His great trouble was that he was unable to climb these 

 mountains, 12,000 feet high, at the time of his visit because they 



