1914] Deane,— William Whitman Bailey 99 
brother's duties, teaching Chemistry, Physiology, and Comparative 
. Anatomy. In 1866 and 1867 he was assistant chemist in the Manches- 
ter Print Works, Manchester, New Hampshire, and in the Massa- 
chusetts Institute of Technology, in Boston. 
Up to this time Bailey did practically no botanical work. While in 
college he amused himself occasionally with the systematic analysis 
of simple plants. It was a mere amusement, botany not being taught 
at that time at Brown University. He says, “While in college and 
for some years after I regarded chemistry as my ultimate goal." In 
1867 he heard of the United States Geological Exploration of the 40th 
Parallel under Clarence King, and he was informed that a botanist 
was wanted. He immediately sought the position, and, on writing 
to Dr. Asa Gray, he received the amusing reply, “Mr. King desires a 
young man who shall at the same time be an accomplished botanist. 
As the two things are incompatible I think you'll do as well as another." 
Bailey accepted the position and from that time devoted himself to 
botany, never returning to chemistry. He started immediately for 
his new field of action. Here again he broke down and, in the spring 
of 1868, Dr. Sereno Watson took his place. In a letter to the writer 
he says, "I was with the party in Nevada about nine months when my 
health failed and I resigned. Still for a tyro my work was not so bad. 
Watson told me that he adopted my sketch of the phytographic 
regions in his report." 
For several years after this he was engaged in various occupations, 
at one time assistant librarian at the Providence Athenaeum, and 
again teaching in private schools, and working in the herbarium of 
Columbia College, New York, with Dr. John Torrey. He also studied 
and did some teaching in the summer school of botany at Harvard 
College in 1875, 1876 and 1879, but his botanical career may be said 
to have begun in 1877 when he started a private cla$s at Brown Uni- 
versity. He writes later, “Botany was not taught at all in Brown 
till I myself introduced it in 1877.” This was the first botanical class 
there, and it was a success. Bailey wrote later, “At the end of the 
season I was voted thirty dollars, and was tempted to go on by the 
title of instructor and the advanced pay of fifty dollars for the season 
of 1878." This was the beginning of a long course of botanical in- 
struction, covering nearly thirty years, for he continued to teach 
there until his resignation in 1906. He became Professor of Botany 
in 1881. His college conferred upon him the degree of Ph.B. in 1873 
