THE FERN BULLETIN 



VOL. VIII 



APRIL, 1900. 



NO. 2. 



JOHN HOWARD REDFIELD. 



NE 



By Prof. Thomas Meehax. 



EW deserve to be held in more grateful remembrance by 



pteridologists than John H. Redfield. The best workman 



is he who loves his task. Botany with our friend was 

 wholly a labor of love, if indeed to him it was a labor at all. He 

 was a business man, and scientific work his diversion from busi- 

 ness tasks. Though the plants of all orders from any part of the 

 world afforded him material for profitable study, ferns gave him 

 the greatest pleasure. In the knowledge of ferns he was re- 

 garded as an authority. His fern herbarium was especially com- 

 plete. This is now, with the rest of his botanical collections, a 

 part of the great herbarium of the Missouri Botanical Garden, 

 for which it was secured by Prof. Trelease after Mr. Red field's 

 death. 



Though his advice and assistance in solving difficulties in 

 connection with plants in general, and ferns in particular, were 

 continually sought for, he published little. His chief works were 

 the "Distribution of the Ferns of North America," published in 

 the Bulletin of the Torrey Club for 1875; on " insular Floras,'' 

 in the same volume, and the "Flora of Mt. Desert and Adjacent 

 Islands," prepared together with his friend Rand, and issued in 

 1894. He had set for his greatest task the building up and 

 preservation of the great Herbarium of the Academy of Natural 

 Sciences, of Philadelphia. He was the founder of the botanical 

 section of the Academy, chiefly that he might be the authorita- 

 tive conservator. By his will, his collections and books were sold 

 to form the nucleus of a fund for its care for all time. With 

 little more help than was given him by the three workingmen 

 botanists, Messrs. Burk, Parker and Diffenbaugh, he succeeded 

 in making the herbarium a famous one. 



Mr. Redfield was born on July 10th, 181 5, at Middletown, 

 Connecticut. His father, W. C. Redfield, was a remarkable 

 illustration of self- culture. They had few books made by hand 



