During the last few years of his life, despite failing 
eyesight, Roy collected aphids on his farm, making 
major contributions to the New York State list of these 
specialized insects (Leonard 1971, 1975). He collected 
and prepared 6,000 moth specimens in 1969, and 
remained active through age 98. Roy died at his home 
on 13 November 1979, and was buried in the Orient 
Central Cemetery. *T ' - • * ■ -- 
Roy Latham possessed an innate genius for 
documenting what he saw; and the responsibility and 
good sense to deposit his specimens in museums and to 
communicate about them in arenas accessible to other 
naturalists. He published extensively in scientific 
journals over seven decades. Frederick C. Schlauch, the 
foremost authority on his publications, estimates that 
there may be over 300 papers scattered through the 
literature of the diverse disciplines that interested him 
(Schlauch, verbal comm.). Between 1968 and 1978. 
more than 100 papers and notes by Latham were 
published in Engelhardtia and The Pitch Pine 
Naturalist , journals of the Northeastern Field 
Naturalists' Society [formerly Long Island 
Herpetological Society]. Schlauch had founded this 
group in 1965. and edited its publications. A 
voluminous correspondence from 1967 to 1979 between 
Schlauch and Latham strongly bonded these two 
naturalists, resulting in an unsurpassed contribution to 
the literature of Long Island natural history (Schlauch, 
verbal comm.). : 
- • ‘ > 
Roy Latham, The Botanist 1 J 
Although Roy Latham witnessed the development 
of the automobile as a familiar mode of transportation, 
he travelled extensively by horse and wagon, bicycle, 
(Schlauch 1971). and on foot. He mentioned crawling 
on hands and knees over every inch of certain tracts , 
(letter to me. 4 October 1977). which he must have 
done to obtain the records his specimens prove. This 
slow pace allowed close observation, and is undoubtedly 
responsible for his outstanding success in locating 
natural history treasures throughout eastern Long Island. 
Among Latham's botanical writings. "The Flora of 
the Town of Southold. Long Island and Gardiner's 
Island," co-authored with Stewart H. Burnham, with its 
five supplementary lists (Burnham & Latham 
1914-1925), was his monumental achievement, 
representing many years of field work and study of 
collected specimens. Observations for this flora began 
before 1900 (Latham 1957). 
It is fortunate that Roy- became acquainted .with; - 
Stewart Henry Burnham, himself an extraordinarily.. . 
thorough natural history collector and record-keeper . 
interested in vascular plants, cryptogams, and . 
ornithology. Burnham was bom at Vaughns (near 
Hudson Falls) in Washington County, New York, on 6 
October 1870. After studying in local schools, he 
attended Stanford University from 1893-1895; then 
finished his undergraduate degree at the University of 
Michigan at Ann Arbor, graduating with a B.S. on 22 
June 1899. Further studies were undertaken at Cornell 
University in 1904-1905. His concentration was botany. 
Burnham’s professional credits are impressive:. Museum 
Aid at the New York Botanical Garden (1901-1903), 
Assistant in Botany at Cornell (1904-1905), Assistant 
State Botanist of New York with Charles H. Peck 
(1905-1913), Assistant in Botany at Cornell 
(1920-1922). and Assistant Curator of the Cornell 
University Herbarium (1922 until ca. 1940). Burnham 
died at Hudson Falls, New York, on 25 September 1943 
(Cattell & Cattell 1927; Barnhart 1965). 
In the introduction to then flora (Burnham & 
Latham 1914), Burnham wrote: "Roy A. Latham of 
Orient, from May 25, 1909, until the present time 
[probably 1913], collected the following plants: and 
many of the specimens passed through my hands while 
in the State Botanist's office at Albany, New York,.., 
[T]he... specimens are preserved in the New York State 
Herbarium...." This well illustrates Latham’s method of 
communicating with appropriate professionals to their 
mutual benefit, and indicates that he began serious 
floristic work in his late twenties. A large cache of 
correspondence between Burnham and Latham from this 
1 period is preserved at the New York State Museum 
- Herbarium (NYS), with the records of Charles H. Peck 
(John H. Haines, verbal comm.). Unfortunately, no 
letters to or from Roy are in Burnham’s correspondence 
at the Cornell University Archives, where the extremely 
meticulous journals and many other artifacts of this 
idiosyncratic Victorian botanist are also housed. 
The flora these two men produced is outstanding in 
its scope, covering insect galls, algae, fungi, lichens, 
bryophytes, and vascular plants. Burnham had the 
professional connections and scientific society 
affiliations (Cattell & Cattell 1927) to facilitate 
identifications by specialists, which greatly added to the 
quality of then catalogue. They updated it five times 
over the next ten years. It remains a model from the 
period, and is a baseline of information about this 
region's entire flora, as well as an important historical 
document concerning the biota of the Mid- Atlantic 
Coastal Plain. 
Voucher specimens for this flora were deposited (as 
they were sent for identification) at NYS (also at some 
specialists' institutions, as indicated); but Burnham kept 
many significant Latham specimens, for his enormous 
- personal herbarium (75.000 specimens. Lanjouw & 
Stafleu 1954), which now forms 'an important nucleus of 
eastern New York material in the Cornell University 
herbaria (BH-CU, and CUP). Roy's personal botanical,' 
Long Island March - April 1993 
Botanical Society 
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