8 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



]VIr. Nuttall was a person of great simplicity of life and manners, 

 and of extremely retiring habits, though affable and communicative 

 when with congenial companions. Although fond of every depart- 

 ment of Natural History, and a proficient in ornithology and miner- 

 alogy, to our knowledge of which he made useful contributions, his 

 favorite pursuit was Botany. His earliest and principal work, the 

 Genera of North American Plants, revealed talents for observation 

 and description of a high order, and a quickness in detecting natural 

 affinities which seemed to be intuitive, and was certainly very re- 

 markable for that day. Altogether, the name of Nuttall must ever 

 stand very high among the pioneers of botanical science in the United 

 States. 



The three names which now disappear from the roll of our Foreign 

 Honorary Members, belonged one to each of our three Classes. They 

 are those of the great Engineer, the great Geographer, and of one 

 of the most distinguished Greek scholars of the age. 



Stephenson died in October last, in middle age; Ritter, on the 

 28th of September, in his eighty-first year ; Thiersch, near the end of 

 February, in his seventy-seventh year. 



Robert Stephenson was the son, pupil, and companion of the 

 illustrious George Stephenson, — a man to whose genius, persevering 

 industry, and practical good sense our age is more indebted for its 

 greatest instrument of civilization and material progress, than to the 

 talents or labors of any other individual. Inheriting a good measure 

 of his father's mental endowments, and judiciously trained in the 

 physical and mathematical sciences, by which his talents were de- 

 veloped, strengthened, and directed, without bemg smothered or dis- 

 torted by an excess of mere learning, our associate opened upon his 

 career, as assistant to his father in building the Liverpool and Man- 

 chester railway, and in perfecting the locomotive which triumphed 

 over all its competitors in 1829. The completion of this road and 

 engine established the fact that railways were to become the greatest 

 instrument of intercourse amongst men, and were to carry the power 

 of civilization whenever the dry land appeared. 



On the formation of the London and Birmingham company for the 

 commencement of the road which was to become the central line of 

 England, Mr. Stephenson, although hardly thirty years old, received 

 the appointment of Chief Engineer, when he soon established a repu- 

 tation second only to that of his father ; and on the gradual retirement 



