18 
The Perennial Adventure 
the great herbaria of the Smithsonian Institution in "W ashington, 
D. C., the New York Botanical Garden and Arnold Arboretum 
near Boston $ also in London’s Kew Gardens and British Museum, 
the University of Cambridge, and Jardin des Plantes in Paris. 
Returning home in June 1912 to participate in the Academy’s 
reopening in magnificent new buildings, Alice Eastwood found 
herself a legend—a celebrated heroine of the great disaster. Her 
own account of course is modest, but she is credited with saving 
complete Academy records and irreplaceable botanical type speci¬ 
mens which became the nucleus of all the collections that now¬ 
adays distinguish the Academy’s botanical department. This feat 
was accomplished by extreme personal risk, while the Market 
Street building was collapsing from earthquakes and threatened 
by fire. Her personal possessions she unhesitatingly consigned 
to the flames, save for a favorite pocket lens. 
Contributing to “Science” only a few weeks later (in May 
1906), describing the destruction of the Academy and most of 
its collections, she wrote: “I do not feel the loss to be mine, but 
it is a great loss to the scientific world and an irreparable loss to 
California. My own destroyed work I do not lament, for it was 
a joy to me while I did it, and I still can have the same joy in 
starting it again ... to me came the chance to care for what was 
saved from the ruins of the Academy, and with the help of my 
devoted friends I was able to do it.” 
This indomitable spirit characterized Alice Eastwood through 
each era of a long lifetime. Lately lying in bed, mortally ill, she 
would reassure her visitors, “Of course I’ll get well. I’ve always 
been a healthy person.” Approaching ninety-five, she said, “I 
count my age by friends, and I am rich in friends.” 
