1887.] 189 [Annual Report. 



relaxation, he says he at length fought his way through, and 

 attained to respectable rank. 



In college he was noted among his classmates for industry, 

 and it was there, too, that his taste for natural history began 

 to show itself He became familiar with the most of our 

 native plants and to the end of life never lost his love for 

 them. After leaving college, he held the office of private 

 tutor in Maryland, and at the same time began the study of 

 medicine. The rest of his pupilage was passed in Boston, 

 and the last year of it at the Massachusetts General Hospital 

 as house student. He was graduated in medicine in 1830, 

 antl at once began the practice of his profession, having 

 given good grounds to his friends for expecting future emi- 

 nence. But his struggles with poverty were not yet ended. 

 Until his profession co ^^^ yield him a support, he must go 

 out of it, and did, to earn the necessaries of life. To this 

 end he undertook burdensome tasks ; one of them, the cata- 

 loguing and classification of the fifty thousand pamphlets in 

 the library of the Boston Athenaeum, was Herculean, as 

 any one may see who will take the trouble to look over the 

 four large folio volumes he wrote out, monuments of his pa- 

 tient industry and handiwork, and for which he got only a 

 pitiful return. 



The study of natural history was nearer to his heart than 

 all other pursuits, and to that he could always turn, and did, 

 whenever he could command a few spare hours or moments 

 to do so. As a matter of course, he became a member of 

 this Society. This was soon after its organization, and to 

 the time he died, he labored for us without stint. When his 

 studies began to assume a methodical shape, his first investi- 

 gations were in the class of insects, of which, at one time, he 

 had a large collection. Among his first published works was 

 a monograph on the Cicindelse of Massachusetts, printed 

 in 1834, and in 1840 he published an account of the Ameri- 

 can species of shells belonging to the genus Pupa, in regard 

 to which he found much confusion. These shells are very 

 small, and Mr. Say, who named all the species previously 

 described, gave no figures, and consequently naturalists fell 

 into error. "I have received from our best conchologists," 



