A PILGRIMAGE TO TORREYA. 
ORDERED to go south until I should meet the tardy spring 
and summer, I was expected to follow the beaten track to 
east Florida. But I wished rather to avoid the crowd of in- 
valids and pleasure travelers, and turned my attention in 
preference to western Florida, determined that, if possible, I 
would make a pious pilgrimage to the secluded native haunts 
of that rarest of trees, the Torreya taxifolia. 
All that I knew, or could at the moment learn, was, that 
this peculiar evergreen Yew-like tree — prized by arboricul- 
turists for its elegance, and dear to us botanists for the name 
it bears and commemorates — grew on the banks of the Apa- 
lachicola River, somewhere near the confluence of the Flint 
and Chattahoochee, which by their union form it. It was there 
discovered, nearly forty years ago, by Mr. Hardy B. Croom, 
and had since been seen, at two or three stations, by his sur- 
viving associate Dr. Chapman, of Apalachicola, author of the 
Southern Flora. Mr. Croom, upon ascertaining that he was 
the fortunate discoverer of an entirely new type of coniferous 
trees, desired that it should bear Dr. Torrey’s name; and the 
genus Torreya was accordingly so named and characterized 
by the Scotch botanist Arnott. It is of the Yew family, in 
foliage and in male flowers much resembling the Yew itself, 
but more graceful than the European Yew-tree, wholly des- 
titute of the berry-like cup which characterizes the latter 
genus, and with the naked seed itself fleshly-coated, and larger 
than an olive, which it resembles in shape and appearance. 
One young tree, brought or sent by Mr. Croom himself, has 
been kept alive at New York — showing its aptitude for a 
colder climate than that of which it is a native—and has been 
more or less multiplied by cuttings. Sprigs from this tree 
1 “ American Agriculturist,” 1875, 262. 
2 «The American Agriculturist ” for May states that the tree spoken 
