THE FERN BULLETIN 



VOL. VIII JULY, 1900. NO. 3. 



DANIEL CADY EATON. 



By Prof. William Albert Setchell 



DANIEL CADY EATON, Professor of Botany in Yale Uni- 

 versity, is the central figure in the development of our 

 knowledge of the ferns of North America. He was the 

 one who gave to us the first comprehensive account of our ferns, 

 and it is due to him that so many of the troubles, once serious 

 problems of fern identity and fern synonymy, have been so com- 

 pletely and so satisfactorily settled. He who starts to day to study 

 ferns can little imagine the difficulties of this earlier work, largely 

 because it was done so thoroughly apd so well. 



Professor Eaton was born September 12, 1S34. at the little 

 army post of Fort Gratiot, Mich. His father was Amos B Eaton, 

 later Brigadier General in the United States Army, and in charge 

 of the Commissary Department during the Civil War. He served 

 with distinction in the Mexican and Seminole wars, and, although 

 actively engaged in the service of his country, he found some time 

 to cherish an interest in botany and to collect an occasional rare 

 specimen. General Eaton's father was Amos Eaton, Senior Pro- 

 fessor in the Rensselaer Institute at Troy, N. Y , and one of the 

 most prominent and influential figures in the history of botany in 

 our country in the first half of the present century. The manuals 

 of Amos Eaton were the only ones accessible and influenced all 

 our earlier botanists. Amos Eaton, moreover, is said to have 

 encouraged and aided John Torrey in his earlier botanical studies, 

 Torrey influenced Asa Gray, and Gray, in turn, influenced and 

 instructed the subject of our sketch. Historically and botanically, 

 this direct succession is of very considerable interest. 



On the paternal side, the descent of Daniel C. Eaton was from 

 an old and distinguished colonial New England family of English 

 origin. His mother was Elizabeth Selden, whose family had been 

 long settled in Connecticut. He married Caroline, daughter of 

 the late Tread well Ketchum, of New Haven, and left two children, 

 a daughter and a son, George F. Eaton, Ph. D., who is, at present' 

 Instructor in Comparative Osteology in Yale University. 



Daniel C. Eaton graduated from Yale College with the famous 

 Class of 1857, and then proceeded to the Lawrence Scientific 



