OP ARTS AND SCIENCES. 263 



His grandfather, John Torrey, with his son, William, removed from 

 Boston to Montreal at the time of the enforcement of the " Boston 

 Port bill." But neither of them was disposed to be a refugee. For 

 the son, then a lad of seventeen years, ran away from Canada to New 

 York, joined his uncle Joseph Torrey, a major of one of the two light 

 infantry regiments of regulars (called Congress's own) which were 

 raised in that city ; was made an ensign, and was in the rear-guard of 

 his regiment on the retreat to White Plains ; served in it throughout 

 the war with honor, and until at the close he re-entered the city upon 

 " Evacuation Day," when he retired with the rank of captain. More- 

 over, the father soon followed the son, and became quartermaster of 

 the regiment. Captain Torrey, in 1791, married Margaret Nichols, 

 of New York. 



The subject of this biographical notice was the second of the issue 

 of this marriage, and the oldest child who survived to manhood. He 

 was boi'n in New York, on the 15th of August, 1796. He received 

 such education only as the public schools of his native city then 

 afforded, and was also sent for a year to a school in Boston. When 

 he was fifteen or sixteen years old, his father was appointed Fiscal 

 Agent of the State Prison at Greenwich, then a suburban village, to 

 which the family removed. 



At this early age he chanced to attract the attention of Amos Eaton, 

 who soon afterwards became a well-known pioneer of natural science, 

 and with whom it may be said that popular instruction in natural 

 history in this country began. He taught young Torrey the structure 

 of flowers and the rudiments of botany, and thus awakened a taste 

 and kindled a zeal which were extinguished only with his pupil's life. 

 This fondness soon extended to mineralogy and chemistry, and proba- 

 bly determined the choice of a profession. In the year 1815, Torrey 



(in 1674, 1683, and 1695), as well as of having three times declined the presi- 

 dency of Harvard College (after Hoar, after Oakes, and after Rogers). Although 

 educated at the College, he was not a graduate, because lie left it in 1650, after 

 tliree years' residence, just when the term for the A.B. degree was lengthened to 

 four years. The tradition has it, that, " at the prayer-meetings of the students, 

 he was generally invited to make the concluding prayer," — for which an obvious 

 reason suggests itself, — for " such was his devotion of spirit that, after praying 

 for two hours, the regret was that he did not continue longer." Students of the 

 present day are probably less exacting, 



The desire to chiim a descent through so eminent a member of the family is 

 natural. But our late venerable associate, Mr. Savage, in his Dictionary of 

 early New England families, states that he could not ascertain that Samuel had 

 any children. 



