oon to speak authoritatively; but gratitude and love will not
be silent, and no story of Wellesley's first half-century would
be complete that held no records of their devotion and continuing
influence.

Among the pioneers, there was no more interesting and forceful
personality than Susan Maria Hallowell, who came to Wellesley as
Professor of Natural History in 1875, the friend of Agassiz and
Asa Gray. She was a Maine woman, and she had been teaching
twenty-two years, in Bangor and Portland, before she was called
to Wellesley. Her successor in the Department of Botany writes
in a memorial sketch of her life:

"With that indefatigable zeal so characteristic of her whole life,
she began the work in preparation for the new position. She went
from college to college, from university to university, studying
the scientific libraries and laboratories. At the close of this
investigation she announced to the founders of the college that
the task which they had assigned to her was too great for any
one individual to undertake. There must be several professorships
rather than one. Of those named she was given first choice, and
when, in 1876, she opened her laboratories and actually began her
teaching in Wellesley College, she did so as professor of Botany,
although her title was not formally changed until 1878.

"The foundations which she laid were so broad and sure, the several
courses which she organized were so carefully outlined, that,
except where necessitated by more recent developments in science,
only very slight changes in the arrangement and distribution of
the work in her department have since been necessary.... She
organized and built up a botanical library which from the first
was second to that of no other college in the country, and is
to-day only surpassed by the botanical libraries of a few of our
great universities."

Fortunately the botanical library and the laboratories were housed
in Stone Hall, and escaped devastation by the fire.

Professor Hallowell was the first woman to be admitted to the
botanical lectures and laboratories of the University of Berlin.
She "was not a productive scholar", again we quote from Professor
Ferguson, "as that term is now used, and hence her gifts and her
achievements are but little known to the botanists of to-day. She
was preeminently a teacher and an organizer. Only those who knew
her in this double capacity can fully realize the richness of her
nature and the