362 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 
States was never carried further ; although a Compendium, a 
pocket volume for the field, containing brief characters of 
the species which were to have been described in the second 
volume, along with an abridgment of the contents of the first, 
was issued in 1826. Moreover, long before Dr. Torrey could 
find time to go on with the work, he foresaw that the natural 
system was not much longer to remain, here and in England, 
an esoteric doctrine, confined to profound botanists, but was 
destined to come into general use and to change the character 
of botanical instruction. He was himself the first to apply it 
in this country in any considerable publication. 
The opportunity for this, and for extending his investiga- 
tions to the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains on their 
western boundary, was furnished by the collections placed in 
Dr. Torrey’s hands by Dr. Edwin James, the botanist of 
Major Long’s expedition in 1820. This expedition skirted 
the Rocky Mountains belonging to what is now called Colo- 
rado Territory, where Dr. James, first and alone, reached the 
charming alpine vegetation, scaling one of the very highest 
summits, which from that time and for many years afterward 
was appropriately named James’s Peak; although it is now 
called Pike’s Peak, in honor of General Pike, who long be- 
fore had probably seen, but had not reached it. 
As early as the year 1823, Dr. Torrey communicated to the 
Lyceum of Natural History descriptions of some new species 
of James’s collection, and in 1826 an extended account of all 
the plants collected, arranged under their natural orders. 
This is the earliest treatise of the sort in this country, ar- 
ranged upon the natural system ; and with it begins the his- 
tory of the botany of the Rocky Mountains, if we except a 
few plants collected early in the century by Lewis and Clark, 
where they crossed them many degrees farther north, and 
which are recorded in Pursh’s Flora. The next step in the 
direction he was aiming was made in the year 1831, when he 
superintended an American reprint of the first edition of 
Lindley’s “ Introduction to the Natural System of Botany,” 
and appended a catalogue of the North American genera 
arranged according to it, 
