JET. 19.] A UTOBIOGRAPHY. IT 



taught chemistry, geology, mineralogy, and botany, to 

 boys, making with the boys very pleasant botanical 

 excursions through the country round. My first sum- 

 mer vacation, if I rightly remember, was in cholera 

 year, the disease being very fatal in Utica. About 

 the time it made its appearance in New York I 

 started off from Bridgewater, taking a little country 

 stage-coach down the Unadilla to Pennsylvania ; vis- 

 ited Carbondale and made a collection of calamites 

 and fossil ferns ; thence by stage-coach through the 

 Wind Gap to Easton ; thence out to Bethlehem, where 

 I passed a day with old Bishop Schweinitz, 1 gave 

 him a Carex which he said was new, but I told him it 

 was Carex livida, Wahl. (and I was right) ; back to 

 Easton ; thence up to Sussex County, N. J., collect- 

 ing minerals (Franklinite, etc.) ; thence to adjacent 

 Orange County, N. Y., collecting spinelles, etc., as 

 well as botanizing ; thence down to New York early 

 in September; there I met Dr. Torrey for the first 

 time, and we took a little expedition together down 

 to Tom's River in the pine barrens, and back to New 

 York in a wood-sloop. 



The next year, in the spring, Dr. Torrey went to 

 Europe, sent to purchase apparatus for the New York 

 City University, then just established. He engaged 

 me to go that summer to collect plants in the pine 

 barrens of New Jersey, he to take the half of my col- 

 lection, paying what would be required to defray my 

 very moderate expenses in the field. I found after- 

 wards that these plants went to B. D. Greene and 

 his brother Copley, then abroad and full of botany ; 



1 Lewis David Schweinitz, 1780-1834; the first American who 

 studied and described the fungi of the United States. He wrote also 

 on other North American cryptogams and carices. 



