LIXNEAX SOCIETY OF LOXDOX. XXXVll 



After this He soon gave up his duties at the Medical College, but was 

 made a trustee of Columbia College, of which the Medical School 

 became a department, and to which he gave not only invaluable 

 services, but also his vast botanical collections and choice library. 

 To these useful and needful services he gave his days (his nights to 

 botanical researches) quite to the last. Up to a few weeks before 

 his death his light could be seen untU near midnight in the herbarium 

 of Columbia College ; and until a few days before he died he signed, 

 although with feeble hand, the official report of the daily work at the 

 Assay Office, faithful to every duty and every detail to the last. He 

 died from an attack of pneumonia on the 10th of March, 1873. 



Dr. Torrey was elected a Foreign Member of this Society on the 

 7th of May, 1839. 



Fkiedrich Welwitsch was born in the year 1807. He was one 

 of a large family, his father being the owner of an extensive farm, 

 and surveyor of a district in Carinthia, in the Austrian Empire. 

 WTien quite a boy, Welwitsch acquired his first taste for Botany, 

 which he carried with him to school, and used to bring home with 

 him in the holidays the plants he had found. His father en- 

 couraged him and helped him to make out the names of his dis- 

 coveries b)' means of an old herbal, and an apothecary in the town 

 where he resided also assisted him in his early botanical studies. 



In due course he was sent to the University of Vienna, being in- 

 tended for the legal profession. But the irresistible tendency towards 

 natural science drew him from the law, and he made no progress. 

 His father in displeasure withdrew his allowance from the young 

 student, who was then left to himself, and is said to have for a time 

 supported himself by writing critiques on the theatres. With a view to 

 a more congenial living, however, Welwitscli entered the Medical 

 Faculty of the University, and at the same time pursued Botany ^vith 

 increased assiduity. His first publication was " Observations on the 

 Cryptogamie Flora of Lower Austria," published in the ' Beitrage 

 zur Landeskunde' of Vienna for 1834, which obtained a prize 

 offered by the mayor of the city. Somewhere about this period he 

 was employed bj' the Government to report on the cholera in Savoy, 

 and this mark of confidence reconciled his father to his change of 

 profession. For a while Welwitsch travelled with a nobleman as 

 tutor, and then returned to Vienna to complete his studies. In due 

 course he graduated in Medicine, his thesis being ** A Synopsis of the 

 Nostochmece of Lower Austria," printed in ]*3*i. 



