1895.] NATURAL, SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 293 



was thus led ultimately to discover the rotary motion of storms 

 and tornadoes; how the simplest elements of knowledge only were 

 taught in the district school by peripatetic teachers who boarded 

 around, and taught during the terms, Lindley's English Reader, 

 Milton's Paradise Lost, the Bible and Cook's Voyages being nearly 

 all the books within reach. Amoug all these varied teachers he 

 remembered two women, to whom he was especially indebted for his 

 love of flowers and nature. They fixed in him his earlier tendencies 

 and he was emphatic in his belief that for boys under ten years of 

 age good women, all other things being equal, rather than men, 

 make the best teachers. His father brought him from New York a 

 Latin grammar and reader, and he tried in a measure to teach him- 

 self. He was now at an age — ten years — -to appreciate the value 

 of knowledge, and would recite his lesson to the minister of their 

 church. A literary society was founded in the vicinity, encouraged 

 mainly by his father, and it was, he thought, this little institution 

 which made a man of him, though there were not over three hundred 

 volumes in the library. One of these books was Thornton's Grammar 

 of Botany. He felt himself something of a botanist from that time. 

 His father subsequently moved to New York. Here a school on 

 the Lancasterian system was established, a system in which the 

 advanced boys, as monitors, aided in teaching the classes; but instead 

 of the mere elementary studies in the general Lancasterian system, 

 a higher school was established in which mathematics, drawing, 

 bookkeeping, the ancient and modern languages, and something 

 of a business collegiate course was attempted. His father having 

 met with financial reverses, the boy had to leave school when four- 

 teen years of age and help to support himself by entering as a clerk 

 in a dry goods store, his work being to clean, dust and deliver 

 parcels. Thus he passed three years, keeping up, however, his early 

 habit of self-culture in all his spare time. The story was so interest- 

 ing that I made a note of it, and this is all our good friend ever said 

 to me of himself. 



I was elected a member of the Academy in 1860, and at once 

 applied myself to assist Mr. Elias Durand, who alone seemed in- 

 terested in the herbarium at that time. Mr. Redfield, a few years 

 later, though actively engaged in business, made a practice of drop- 

 ping in for a short time at noon, daily, to give encouragement by 

 his presence at least. This was my first acquaintance with him. 



