Porter : Reminiscences of John Torrey 563 



had planned a botanical excursion for us two to Tom's River, New 

 Jersey, whither we went, and entertained by old friends of his, who 

 resided there, devoted several days to exploration over and around 

 Barnegat Bay. Not a few interesting plants were collected, but 

 we failed to find the Schizaca, or Lycopodium Carolinianum, which 

 usually grows with it. Toward the close of the week, our host 

 and hostess drove us up, seven miles through the deep sand, to 

 the town of Manchester, where we were to pass the night, at the 

 thought of which my heart sank within me, when I saw a dozen 

 or more of the natives seated on benches in front of the inn, each 

 with a branch of a tree or bush, fighting off the bloodthirsty mos- 

 quitoes. But my fears were needless. The landlord slipped me 

 into a little back chamber on the ground floor, where wire-screens 

 kept out the insect pests, and I slept soundly. 



The next morning Dr. Torrey debated with himself, pro and cou y 

 whether it would be prudent to pay a visit to his botanical friend, 

 Dr. Knieskern, who lived in the neighborhood. The obstacle in 

 the way was this : Dr. K.'s wife cherished an intense dislike to his 

 botanical work and had once opened her mind to Dr. Torrey, and 

 reproached him for encouraging her spouse to waste his valuable 

 time on worthless weeds, to the detriment of his medical practice. 

 He now shrank from again facing such music, and so I lost the 

 opportunity of making the personal acquaintance of Dr. K., whose 

 striking photograph adorns my album, and his Rynchospora my 



herbarium. 



Those days of pleasant intercourse can never be forgotten. 

 They enlarged our acquaintance with each other, and I found him 

 uniformly kind, patient, quiet in his manner and yet genial and full 

 of spirit, without assumption and ready to enrich me from his am- 

 ple stores of knowledge. One thing I remember well. In de- 

 scribing his experiences in California, he said that he had counted 

 1,200 rings on the felled trunk o( one of the giant sequoias, and 

 that those between 6 and 700 years ago were much closer than 

 either before or after, and thus chronicled the slower growth of a 



century. 



It is a matter for regret that, whilst the generic name of this 

 magnificent and long-lived tree on the Sierra Nevada, and of the 

 redwood along the coast, is likely to stand for ages to come in 



