560 Hyatt: Reminiscences of John Torrey 



specimens, especially dwarf maples. Darlingtonia was shown from 

 California* and the southern species of Sarracenia. We received 

 from Dr. Mellichamp the nutmeg hickory and the pecan. Packages 

 of plants were constantly arriving from Dr. Torrey's former stu- 

 dents. At one time I learned that a former student seeing Dr. 

 Torrey so much and so constantly at work, said to him, "Dr. 

 Torrey, I don't like to see you doing so much drudgery, here 

 is a thousand dollars, take it and get you an assistant/' It was in 

 that way that Mr. LeRoy became curator at the herbarium. 



Once deploring to me the rapid and wide encroachments of 

 the city on his wild-plant regions, Dr. Torrey thanked God for 

 the great swamps and mountains which would be barriers to such 

 inroads. His love for wild nature was shown in his selection of a 

 country residence, near the top of a wooded hill in southeastern 

 Rockland County, overlooking the Hudson. 



Once I was showing Dr. Torrey, without using it, a little 

 amorphous silicon in a bottle, which I prized, as a mere dust of it 

 had cost me a dollar. To see what he would say, I asked, "Dr. 

 Torrey, what is that? " He looked at it a minute and said : " It 

 appears like ashes." I said, "Suppose it is the most abundant 

 thing in the world that can be made visible ? " " Then," said he, 

 "it must be silicon!" When I next called, it was Dr. Torrey's 

 turn to show me specimens. One was tellurium, then more 

 costly than gold, grain for grain. Another was selenium, that 

 proteid element, in a small black shining cylinder. More still to 

 be prized was a tube as large and long as a quill, containing a 

 fine lot of shining crystals of silicon, which had been obtained by 

 Prof. Wolcott Gibbs, of Harvard — who had learned chemistry 

 under Torrey, and, when a lad, had listened to my own chemical 

 lectures at Dr. Muhlenberg's St. Paul's College, near Flushing. 

 After I had admired the specimens to his content, Dr. Torrey 

 said, M Take them along with you." I could not refuse. 



Dr. Torrey was for years the chief of the U. S. Assay in Wall 



t 



St., where he earned more money and had more leisure than ever 

 anywhere else. It was a position of great responsibility. I re- 

 member calling at his office in the assay, the Doctor sitting at 

 his desk, while assay ers would come in occasionally to report the 

 result of the examination of some mass of gold. On his desk 



