SKETCH OF WILLIAM STARLING SULLIVANT. 691 



and before the introduction of railroads afforded the best accom- 

 modations and facilities to the traveling public. He was one of 

 the original stockholders and directors of the Clinton Bank, and 

 for a time its president. 



Mr. Sullivant was not one of those whose predilection for 

 science appeared at an early age. He was nearly thirty years 

 old, and his youngest brother, Joseph, was already somewhat 

 proficient in botany, conchology, and ornithology, before his 

 interest in natural history was aroused. He had married Miss 

 Jane, daughter of Alexander K. Marshall, of Kentucky, and niece 

 of Chief-Justice Marshall, and was living in his suburban resi- 

 dence in a rich floral district. His wife had died within a year 

 after marriage, leaving him an infant daughter. 



His first scientific observations were upon the birds. When 

 his attention was directed to botany, by his brother Joseph, he 

 took up the subject with the determination to acquire a thorough 

 knowledge of it. " He collected and carefully studied," says Prof. 

 Gray in the memoir already quoted from,* " the plants of the 

 central part of Ohio, made neat sketches of the minuter parts of 

 many of them, especially of the grasses and sedges, entered into 

 communication with the leading botanists of the country, and in 

 1840 he published A Catalogue of Plants, Native or Naturalized, 

 in the Vicinity of Columbus, Ohio (63 pages), to which he added 

 a few pages of valuable notes. His only other direct publication 

 in phanerogamous botany is a short article upon three new plants 

 which he had discovered in that district, contributed to the 

 American Journal of Science and Arts in the year 1842. The 

 observations which he continued to make were communicated to 

 his correspondents and friends, the authors of the Flora of North 

 America, then in progress. 



" As soon as the flowering plants of his district had ceased to 

 afford him novelty, he turned to the mosses, in which he found 

 abundant scientific occupation, of a kind well suited to his bent 

 for patient and close observation, scrupulous accuracy, and nice 

 discrimination. His first publication in his chosen department, 

 the Musci Alleghanienses, was accompanied by the specimens 

 themselves of mosses and hepaticce collected in a botanical ex- 

 pedition through the Alleghany Mountains from Maryland to 

 Georgia, in the summer of 1843, the writer of this notice being 

 his companion. The specimens were not only critically deter- 

 mined, but exquisitely prepared and mounted, and with letter- 

 press of great perfection ; the whole forming two quarto volumes, 

 which well deserve the encomium bestowed by Pritzel in his The- 

 saurus. It was not put on sale, but fifty copies were distributed 



* Read before the National Academy of Sciences, April 22, 18Y5, 



