1283 
It is when I think of the rare pleasures which 
were In store for Meyer in the evening of his life, 
watching these plants of his become more important 
every year, that the tragedy of his early death seems 
keenest. He might have wandered under avenues of his 
Chinese pistache, or rested under the shade of his 
dry-land elm, or strolled through orchards of his Fel 
tcheng peach; the earliest ripening cherries in Amer- 
ica he might have picked from trees in this country 
grown from scions he secured in Tangsi, and he might 
have gathered hardy walnuts from his Manchurian wal- 
nut trees, or sweet chestnuts from his blight resis- 
tant chestnut trees: he might have eaten candled 
Chinese haws, or bought in our markets delicious 
Chinese jujubes grown in large orchards in California 
and our Southwest. How each industry, each successful 
introduction would have brought to his mind the inci- 
dents of its discovery and given him a thrill of sat- 
isfaction over a difficult work which was destined to 
enrich the horticulture of the whole world! 
But there is another side than that of the per- 
sonal loss which we all feel on reading the brief 
cables that, flashed around the world, tell of the 
ending of Meyer's work. It is the realization of the 
greatness of the loss to the horticultural world. 
It was in the work of ferreting out the details 
of the culture and proper handling of the thousands 
of his introductions that Meyer excelled, and now all 
this gathered plant lore from which we had expected 
to draw in years to come is gone. His notes were re- 
markable characterizations of the uses and cultural 
requirements of the plants he studied, and are in 
themselves distinct contributions to the horticultural 
literature of today; but they are very little compared 
to what he could have told us himself. 
Frank N. Meyer was born In Amsterdam, Holland, 
and from boyhood he showed a love of plants and a 
lust for travel. He used to tell us how he walked 
over the Alps Into Italy to see the orange groves 
there and then walked back again. For several years 
he was the Assistant in the Amsterdam Botanical Garden 
and was closely associated with Hugo de Vries during 
the years when the latter was writing his book on Mu- 
tations. Coming to America with letters from Professor 
de V,ries and from the Dutch poet Van Eden, he began 
working in the greenhouses of the Department. His 
craving for travel caused him, however, to wander to 
California, and through Mexico and back on foot; later 
