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^ 1942] Kern: Joseph Charles Arthur 835 tested. The modern era of botanical teaching and research was in its infancy. In 1872 botanical positions had not come into being in the colleges and universities. Agricultural experiment stations had not been founded, and there were no state or national departments of agriculture. Not until 1879, when he went to the University of Wisconsin as instructor in botany, did young Arthur succeed in obtaining a botanical position. But in the intervening years he never for a moment gave up the determination to make botany his life work, although he had to give attention to other things. He taught country schools several winters. He returned to the college at Ames several times to carry on special work. He prepared an exhibit for the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876. This consisted of a display of the flora of Iowa. For this he was awarded two diplomas and a bronze medal. In Philadelphia he worked for a time for a mineralogist. Then, going back to Iowa State, he became an assistant—not in botany but in zoology. He served also as an assistant in the library, where he helped to inaugurate the Dewey system of classification. His graduate work was in botany, the thesis being on the anatomy of Echinocystis lobata (wild cucumber-vine), and resulted in his receiving in 1877 the first Master of Science degree conferred by the College. For a while after that he had no work, but his yearning for an opportunity to work with plants led him to correspond with Peter Henderson, famous florist and seedsman of New York. This resulted in an opportunity for him to work in the Henderson greenhouses. This was in 1879. But the plan was never carried out. On his way to New York he stopped off at Baltimore to explore the city and more particularly the newly established Johns Hopkins University. A more or less chance interview with the President resulted in the offer of a complimentary fellowship of the value of $100.00. The opportunity to stay for a term was particularly welcome because the renowned mycologist, Dr. William G. Farlow, of Harvard, was coming within a week to begin a course of lectures. The Peter Henderson plan was abandoned. This spring term at Johns Hopkins was followed immediately with a summer term at Harvard. Work with Dr. Farlow was continued and other work was taken with Dr. George Lincoln Goodale and Dr. Asa Gray. What more could a struggling botanical student have desired 1 But there was more—John M. Coulter and Charles R. Barnes were fellow students. Lasting associations dated from that summer. Two or three years later Arthur, Barnes, and Coulter were working on the Handbook of Plant Dissection, which naturally came to be known as the ABC book. Botanical science is also indebted to these same three men for the Botanical Gazette, which they jointly edited over a long period of years. In 1884 Joseph Charles Arthur was elected botanist in the newly founded Agricultural Experiment Station at Geneva. Here was a position for which he was well prepared and to which he was well suited. He had not been entirely happy in the teaching positions he had held just before at Wisconsin and Minnesota. The opportunity to do full-time research was exactly wha