OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 271 



fourth in the mountains of Northern China. All four of them have 

 been introduced and are greatly prized as ornamental trees in Europe.' 

 So that, all round the world, Torreya taxifoUa, Torreija Calif oi-nica, 

 Torrerja nucifera, and Torreya grandis — as well as his own important 

 contributions to botany, of which they are a memorial — should keep 

 our associate's memory as green as their own perpetual verdure. 



William Starling Sullivant died at his residence in Columbus, 

 Ohio, on the 30th of April ult. In him we lose the most accomplished 

 bryologist which this country has produced ; and it can hardly be said 

 that he leaves behind him anywhere a superior. 



He was born January 15, 1803, at the little village of Franklinton, 

 then a frontier settlement in the midst of primitive forest, near the site 

 of the present city of Columbus. His father, a Virginian, and a man 

 of marked character, was appointed by Government to survey the lands 

 of that district of the " North Western Territory " which became the 

 central part of the now populous State of Ohio ; and he early purchased 

 a large tract of land, bordering on the Scioto River, near by, if not 

 including, the locality which was afterward fixed upon for the State 

 capital. 



William, the eldest son, in his boyhood, if he endured some of the 

 privations, yet enjoyed the advantages of this frontier life, in the way 

 of physical training and early self-reliance. But he was sent to school 

 in Kentucky ; he received the rudiments of his classical education at 

 the so-called Ohio University at Athens, upon the opening of that 

 seminary ; and was afterward transferred to Yale College, where he 

 was graduated in the year 1823. His plans for studying a profession 

 were frustrated by the death of his father in that year. This required 

 him to occupy himself with the care of the family property, then mainly 

 in lands, mills, &c., and demanding much and varied attention. He 

 became surveyor and practical engineer, and indeed took an active part 

 in business down to a recent period. Leisure is hardly to be had in a 

 newly settled country, and least of all by those who have possessions. 

 Mr. Sullivant must have reached the age of nearly thirty years, and, 

 having married early,* was established in his suburban residence, in a 

 rich floral district, before his taste for natural history was at all devel- 

 oped. His brother Joseph, next in age, was already somewhat proficient 

 in botany as well as in conchology and ornithology ; and, when in some 



* His first wife, Jane Marshall, of Kentucky, was a niece of Chief Justice 

 Marshall. She died a few years after marriage. 



