JOHN TORREY. 361 
he reported to the Lyceum of Natural History — of which 
he was one of the founders—his “Catalogue of the Plants 
growing spontaneously within Thirty Miles of the City of 
New York,” which was published two years later; and he was 
already, or very soon after, in correspondence with Kurt 
Sprengel and Sir James Edward Smith abroad, as well as 
with Elliott, Nuttall, Schweinitz, and other American bota- 
nists. Two mineralogical articles were contributed by him to 
the very first volume of the “ American Journal of Science 
and Arts” (1818-1819), and several others appeared a few 
years later, in this and in other journals. 
Elliott’s “Sketch of the Botany of South Carolina and Geor- 
gia” was at this time in course of publication, and Dr. Torrey 
planned a counterpart systematic work upon the botany of 
the northern. States. The result of this was his “ Flora of 
the Northern and Middle Sections of the United States,” 7. e., 
north of Virginia, — which was issued in parts, and the first 
volume concluded in the summer of 1824. In this work Dr. 
Torrey first developed his remarkable aptitude for descriptive 
botany, and for the kind of investigation and discrimination, 
the tact and acumen, which it calls for. Only those few — 
now, alas, very few — surviving botanists who used this book 
through the following years can at all appreciate its value and 
influence. It was the fruit of those few but precious years 
which, seasoned with pecuniary privation, are in this country 
not rarely vouchsafed to an investigator, in which to prove 
his quality before he is haply overwhelmed with professional 
or professorial labors and duties. 
In 1824, the year in which the first volume (or nearly half) 
of his Flora was published, he married Miss Eliza Robin- 
son Shaw, of New York, and was established at West Point, 
having been chosen professor of chemistry, mineralogy, and 
geology in the United States Military Academy. Three years 
later he exchanged this chair for that of chemistry and bot- 
any (practically that of chemistry only, for botany had al- 
ready been allowed to fall out of the medical curriculum in 
this country) in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New 
York, then in Barclay Street. The Flora of the Northern 
