12 
IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 
He was an inspiring teacher and always yonthful. I last met 
him at the quarter centennial celebration of the Missouri 
Botanical Garden last October. Though perhaps not as vigor- 
ous as formerly he was as enthusiastic as when I met him more 
than a quarter of a century ago. It was his unbounded en- 
thusiasm that made him such a successful teacher. It enlisted 
a large number of men to study botany. 
Professor R. J. Pool says, '‘To have met with him was to 
honor him; to have been taught by him was a priceless privi- 
lege ; to have been intimately associated with him and to have 
walked with him into the fields and gardens and to have re- 
ceived from him an insight into the great realm of which he 
was master was to have been led very close to the Great Omnip- 
otent who causes the snowfiakes to fall, 0, so softly, when our 
beloved friend passes beyond the great divide where nothing 
but flowerland and love will greet him.” 
Doctor Bessey was linked to Iowa in many ways. He was 
called to Iowa State College as Professor of Botany and Zoology 
in 1870 and served until 1884. The State University of Iowa 
conferred on him the Ph.D. degree in 1879, and Grinnell College 
the degree of LL.D.‘ in 1898. He received the B.S. degree from 
Michigan Agricultural College in 1869 and the M.S. degree in 
1872. He was born in Milton, Ohio, May 21, 1845, being at 
the time of his death scarcely seventy years old. One would 
think years of usefulness were still ahead of him. The last 
visit I paid Dr. Bessey was a little more than a year ago and 
I was told he was away in Arizona studying some plant physio- 
logical problems. Many honors were given to him. He was 
president of the Old Iowa Academy of Sciences and one of its 
founders, and it is natural that he should have associated him- 
self with the New Iowa Academy of Science and should have 
presented a paper on the Trees of Nebraska at a meeting at 
Ames inaugurating botanical quarters in the New Central 
Building standing where the old Main Building stood and 
where thirty-five years before he gave lectures on botany. 
He was also president of the Botanical Society of America 
1896 ; the Miscroscopical Society 1901 ; the Society for the Pro- 
motion of Agricultural Science 1889-1891. He was a member 
of the leading scientific societies of the United States and 
Europe. 
