THE BOTANISTS OF PHILADELPHIA. 353 



ELIAS DIFFENBACH. 



Elias Diffenbach was a compositor in the printing 

 office of Collins & Company. His vocation injured his 

 health and he was threatened with consumption. Dr. A. 

 W. Chapman wrote from Apalachiola, Florida, that the law 

 allowed him a deputy whose duties were nominal and 

 whose salary would be $1200 a year. He wanted a botanist. 

 Charles E. Smith, of Philadelphia, named Diffenbach, who 

 at first accepted and afterwards declined. Mr. Smith urged 

 him to accept, saying : " If you were a rich man you 

 would spend a thousand dollars in going to Florida for your 

 health. Here you are offered a $1000 if you will go." He 

 finally declined, and Saurman went in his place. Diffen- 

 bach then went to Illinois, where he had a brother, a 

 druggist, with whom he worked, the next year dying of 

 consumption. 



EMILY L. GREGORY, 



Emily L. Gregory * was born at Portage, New York, 

 December 31, 1841. Her early education was had at Albion 

 Seminary, from which school she graduated, afterward 

 teaching at Dunkirk (Fredonia) Friendship Seminary. In 

 1876 she entered Cornell University, where she studied 

 botany and literature, taking her degree of Bachelor of 

 Literature in 1881. She was a teacher of botany at Smith 

 College from 1881 to 1883, and the following winter had 

 charge of the laboratory work in botany, at the Harvard 

 Annex. She went abroad in 1883 and 1884, and studied 

 for two years at Strassburg, under Professor Wigand, and at 



* 1897. Torrey Botanical Bulletin, XXIV : 221, with photograph. The 

 main facts of this sketch are derived from this source. 



I 



