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need for clearing up confusion in older, neg- 
lected but fundamental works. He interpreted 
the basic works by Blanco, Loureiro, Rafinesque, 
and others. He sought new collections to stand 
in place of important old ones no longer exist- 
ing or lost. He instituted great improvements 
in various herbaria and seized the opportunities 
which fell across his path to carry on these 
programs. Most noteworthy of these oppor- 
tunities, so far as I am aware, was the Works 
Progress Administration project, born of the 
depression in the early AO’s and designed to 
give useful work to the unemployed. Nor did 
he seize this opportunity just for himself and 
the organization of which he was by then the 
Director, the New York Botanical Garden. His 
typists, whom he had literally by the dozen, 
made carbons of the original and critical de- 
scriptions, which they copied at his direction 
from otherwise unduplicated literature. Extra 
copies of these he sent to other institutions, 
even though at first they were often not warmly 
received. He realized what the WPA workers 
could do for the prodigious drudgery of bibli- 
ographic work and assigned the best of his staff 
to our joint "Bibliography of Eastern Asiatic 
Botany.” This work is a monument to his vision 
and to the many devoted WPA workers whom 
he selected and inspired by his tirelessness and 
his confidence in their ability to do the job well. 
I think no undertaking exemplifies his breadth 
of vision more than his acquisition and dis- 
tribution of seeds of the now widely known 
Metasequoia from interior China. His limited 
funds were spent, not to take him to the haunts 
of this newly found "living fossil,” but to enable 
trusted Chinese collectors to go, unencumbered 
by accompanying foreigners, to gather a gen- 
erous supply of seeds. These were sent to Dr. 
Merrill, then Director of the Arnold Arboretum 
and Administrator of Botanical Collections at 
Harvard University. He distributed the seeds 
to institutions the world over, wherever he 
thought there was a chance they would be 
planted and cared for. Thus were determined 
by one extensive experiment the optimum con- 
ditions, and the range of possibilities for the 
growth of this most interesting remnant from 
the past. 
Naturally Merrill left much unfinished. His 
sizeable book on Cook’s voyages was his last 
finished contribution. It contains much of his 
distinctive and forceful philosophy, colored, as 
is to be expected, by the circumstances of his 
condition and time of life. His belief in im- 
mortality was his confidence in the enduring 
worth of the foundations he had laid down and 
the ability of others to build thereon. I take 
strength from the confidence expressed in his 
turning over to Dr. F. R. Fosberg and me his 
papers and interest in an eventual fourth edition 
of the Pacific bibliography. 
Dr. Merrill’s influence on botany is not ended; 
it continues through me and many other "Mer- 
rill-men,” a designation I cherish. He wrote 
and worked tirelessly for his chosen subject, 
broadly interpreted in time and space. 
Egbert H. Walker 
