THE BOTANISTS OF PHILADELPHIA. 135 



Forsythe, an Irish friend, one of the best teachers of that 

 time in the county. 



Becoming tired and disgusted with the drudgery of 

 farm labor, William, after much difficulty, induced his 

 father to permit him to study medicine. With this view, in 

 the spring of 1800 he entered the office of Dr. John 

 Vaughan, a respectable physician of Wilmington, in the 

 state of Delaware. 



Whilst pursuing, with assiduity, the study of that pro- 

 fession which he had selected as the business of his life, he 

 devoted those hours, which many would have given to idle 

 recreation, in acquiring a knowledge of the French 

 language under a private teacher, and there developed a 

 passion for the study of languages, which remained with 

 him for life, and enabled him subsequently to make an 

 excellent and satisfactory acquaintance with the French, 

 Latin, Spanish and German, w^hen opportunity was afforded. 



In the winters of 1802-3 and 1803-4, William Dar- 

 lington attended the medical lectures in the University of 

 Pennsylvania, and on the 6th of June, 1804, he received 

 the degree of Doctor of Medicine. Whilst preparing his 

 thesis, after the close of his second course of medical 

 lectures, Doctor Darlington attended the botanical lectures 

 of Professor Benjamin Smith Barton, and thus began his 

 first acquaintance with that science whose beauties and 

 pleasures he did, in later years, so much to illustrate, 

 and in so successful a manner, as to make his name known 

 and respected throughout the botanical world. 



In 1806 Dr. Darlington received the appointment of 

 surgeon to an East India Merchantman, belonging to Phila- 

 delphia, and made a voyage to Calcutta, whence he returned 



