THE BOTANISTS OF PHILADELPHIA. 187 



were notable persons in the early settlement of Pennsyl- 

 vania. He was engaged in business in Philadelphia as a 

 wholesale druggist for over forty years, when he removed to 

 Cambridge, bringing his wife and their four children to her 

 paternal home. From childhood he was more or less devoted 

 to botany ; but in later years, having more leisure, he devoted 

 himself exclusively to the study of the mosses, in which he 

 became proficient. After the death of Sullivant in 1873, 

 James and Lesquereux, became the principal authorities 

 upon mosses in this country ; and the duty appropriately 

 devolved upon them of writing the systematic manual on 

 North American Mosses* which Sullivant had planned. 

 Owing to the preoccupation of Mr. Lesquereux* in paleo- 

 botany, the labor of preparation fell upon Mr. James. He had 

 published several papers upon mosses in the Transactions 

 of the American Philosophical Society, of which he had 

 long been an active member. He contributed to Mr. Wat- 

 son's " Botany of Clarence King's Exploration on the Fortieth 

 Parallel," a notable article on the mosses collected by the 

 botanist of that survey. The American Academy published 

 some of the results of the joint study of these two veteran 

 bryologists. Hundreds of species and varieties had to be 

 patiently examined under the compound microscope, the 

 details sketched, and the differences weighed before descrip- 

 tion. To this task Mr. James devoted all his energies. 

 He had nearly brought this protracted labor to a conclusion, 

 when the eye was suddenly dimmed and the pencil dropped 

 from his hand. Partial paralysis was soon followed by 

 coma, and he died within a fcAV hours.f 



* Manual of the Mosses of North America, by Leo Lesquereux and Thomas P. 

 James. With Six Plates Illustrating the Genera. Boston. S. E. Cassino & Co., 1884, 

 octavo pp., V : 447. 



t See Charles Pickering, II, Sci. Papers, Asa Gray. 



