Dr. E. D. Merrill

Abstract

DR. E. D. Merrill retires from the Arnold professorship of botany, Harvard University, at the end of June. As professor emeritus he is to remain in the house on the margin of the Arnold Arboretum that has been his as director of the Arboretum where, granted good health such as all his many friends wish him, he will enjoy the facilities for botanical study that have been so considerably shaped by him. Under him the inflow of material, living and dried, into the Garden and Herbarium from eastern Asia, Malaysia and the Pacific has been tremendous ; and it is well that he should take a large part in elaborating it. Born on October 15, 1876, Elmer Drew Merrill passed in 1899 from College into the United States Department of Agriculture. In the Department he was selected (1902) for the appointment of government botanist in the Philippine Islands and went out to Manila, one of a few men chosen to start a science service towards which at that time there was nothing but a budgetary appropriation. It was soon evident that his methods were direct and effective. Botanical teaching was added (1912) to his work, and in 1918 the administration of the Bureau of Science. In 1923 the University of California sought and secured his service as dean of the College of Agriculture, where it was his duty to draw into order State-wide organisations that were growing up too loosely knit. In 1930 New York induced him to cross the continent to take the post of director-in-chief of the New York Botanic Garden. Institutions in the United States such as it, depend much on private generosity, and in bad times suffer checks to their activities : it is so in New York, and he had the years of the great depression to combat. It need be no secret that his successes in adjustment led to an invitation to move to Boston (1935) into a post made for him with the title of administrator of the Botanical Collections of the Harvard University and director of the Arnold Arboretum. The collections that passed under him had some likeness to the miscellany he set in order in California, at least in diversity. The University has rearranged these responsibilities ; and his last, the teaching of advanced students in methods of research, passes elsewhere. He is now free to devote his time to botanical research.