FIRST ANNUAL BANQUET. 161 



does not the less interest me. The first years of my 

 student life at Troy were spent in the study of botany, 

 only, however, to study it superficially, to learn the names 

 of the plants, to learn their relations to other plants, and 

 finally, as I began the study of medicine, to know some- 

 thing of their medicinal qualities. I performed many ex- 

 periments upon myself during those years in which I was 

 devoted to botany, and the happiest years of my scientific 

 life were those in which I followed this pursuit of botany, 

 giving me more pleasure, more satisfaction than anything 

 else I have ever done in the same length of time subse- 

 quently. 



Botany in those days extended very little farther than 

 the knowledge of the natural relations of plants, the one 

 class to the other, or the one set of species to another. 

 Very little more than that ; and in the course of two years 

 I had accumulated a herbarium of 900 species of native 

 plants growing along the Hudson Valley within a radius of 

 ten miles around Troy. That botany had become a popu- 

 lar study in the schools may be inferred from the fact that 

 eight editions of Eaton's Manual of Botany, based upon the 

 " Artificial System", so termed, had been published almost 

 before the text-book of Dr. Gray, based upon the " Natu- 

 ral System", had found its way into the schools; Eaton's 

 latest edition, being only a year or two after the first pub- 

 lication of Gray's Elements of Botany. 



But a bequest of this kind is farther reaching than per- 

 haps you will consider when you look at it only in its rela- 

 tions to botany. Every department of science in America 

 has progressed so rapidly that it is scarcely possible to take 

 note of the progress which has been made. Leaving botany 

 for geology, I have known your country, even this locality 

 of St. Louis, just 49 years ago, as a city of less than 20,000 

 people. I made no acquaintances here, I believe, at that 

 time. I was making a geological exploration of the 

 country between New York and the West, the Mississippi 

 River ostensibly. Years later, I become acquainted with 



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