PRESTON BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF DR. C. C. PARRY. 4 1 



Dr. George Engelmann of St. Louis, whose death occurred in 1885. 

 "Since my first acquaintance with him, in 1848," he writes, "when 

 I called on him at St. Louis before starting on my first exploring trip 

 with Dr. D. D. Owen in the then Northwest, our friendly intercourse 

 has been constant, and the letters received from him would make 

 up a respectable volume. How much I owe to his wise counsels, 

 his substantial encouragement, and not less to his sharp criticisms 

 (always well-meant), I can now best realize by feeling their loss. 

 He knew just what to look for, and, when seen, he also knew its 

 significance in elucidating the system of nature." This was not 

 less true of Dr. Parry himself. 



Torrey, Gray, Engelmann, Parry I What were American botany 

 but for these four co-laborers whose work and fame are inseparably 

 interlinked? 



Dr. Parry was essentially a field student, and the general accuracy 

 of his conclusions is largely due to the fact that his observations 

 were all made at first-hand: to this and to the thoroughness of his 

 determinations, which were based on careful dissections of all acces- 

 sible fruit, as well as of the flowering specimen; so that he was gener- 

 ally able, as he declared, to discriminate species by the fruit alone. 



Industrious and indefatigable, "the bulk and value of his col- 

 lections have probably not been equalled in America." (I quote 

 from the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club.) Beside con- 

 tributing largely to the collections of his botanical friends and of 

 various societies at home and abroad, he made for himself one of 

 the finest private herbaria in the land, a collection, systematically 

 classified and arranged, comprising over 18,000 determined speci- 

 mens representative of nearly 6,800 species, together with some 

 1,400 specimens determined only as far as the genus. But while 

 himself thus chiefly occupied in collecting from untrodden heights 

 and tangled wilds, he recognized "with respect and reverence" the 

 magnitude of the task assumed "by those masters of botanical sci- 

 ence who have taken upon their broad shoulders the burden of a 

 systematic arrangement of the whole vegetable kingdom." 



Appreciating the beautiful as he did wherev/^er found, and espe- 

 cially as embodied in floral and arboreal forms, Dr. Parry was yet, 

 for a naturalist, markedly utilitarian. Wherever he went, in what- 

 ever he did, his eyes were open to the practical. The plant, the 

 tree which gave promise of usefulness was to him doubly interest- 

 ing, and he spared no pains to obtain for such the recognition they 



[Pkoo. D. a. N. S., Vol. VI. J ij [October 8, 1893.] 



