^6 DAVENPORT ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES. 



Coming West and to Davenport in the fall of 1846, he entered 

 upon the practice of his profession, but continued in it for a few 

 months only, very soon discovering that all his natural tastes and 

 instincts led directly away from the unreason, the too often self- 

 inflicted ills, and the petty conflicts with which the active physician 

 has perforce to deal — led him to the unvexed, blossoming solitudes 

 where Nature, silent and orderly, works out her fair results. 



His earliest collecting had been done in the attractive floral 

 region about his home in North-eastern New York, in the summer 

 of 1842 and the four years following; and now again, attracted to 

 this more congenial work, we find him employing much of the 

 season of 1847 ^^ making a collection of the wild flowers about 

 Davenport, of which, with the dates of finding, he has left a manu- 

 script list. Those of us who knew him well in after years can 

 readily picture the brisk, dark-complexioned, though blue -eyed 

 youth, symmetrically but slightly built and somewhat below the 

 medium height, in his solitary quest by river side and deep ravine, 

 over wooded bluff and prairie expanse, for the treasures which were 

 more to him than gold — for such early friends as "the prairie 

 primrose, the moccasin-flower, and the gentian," which in later 

 years he complained had been quite driven out by "the blue-grass 

 and white clover." 



In the course of that summer, also, he accompanied a United 

 States surveying party, under Lieutenant J. Morehead, on an excur- 

 sion into Central Iowa, in the vicinity of the present State capital. 

 From this time on (except for a short time while connected with 

 the Mexican Boundary Survey, when he discharged the duties of 

 Assistant Surgeon), the physician was merged in the naturalist. 

 He was almost continuously in the field collecting, but Davenport 

 remained his home. Here, in 1853, he was married to Miss Sarah 

 M. Dalzell, who, dying five years later, left with him an only child, 

 a daughter. But she, too, a fair, unfolding flower, was claimed by 

 death at an early age. 



In 1859 he was married again, to Mrs. E. R. Preston of Westford, 

 Connecticut, who, through the more than thirty years of their 

 union, entered helpfully into all his work and plans, assisting him 

 in his study and often accompanying him to the field, and who is 

 left to mourn the loss of one who, in every relation of life, was 

 exceptionally unselfish and kind. Of his two brothers and six 

 sisters only two remain, viz. : Joseph Parry and Mrs. Charles 



