TIMOTHY ABBOT CONRAD. 387 



timate of the lecture : " With a succinct review of the history of 

 botany he very happily blended some biographical notices of 

 the distinguished men to whom the science owed its origin and 

 illustration. He traced with great acuteness and perspicuity 

 the analogy of vegetable and animal life, admitting the limit 

 of human knowledge. Every view that he furnished of the 

 subject, upon which he is so well qualified to impart instruc- 

 tion in all its details, was just and forcible, while the simplicity 

 of his manner and chasteness of his style were by no means 

 the least interesting traits of the lecturer." The venerable 

 Frederick Fraley, Esq., of Philadelphia, recently informed me 

 that he was present at the introductory lecture referred to, 

 and that Mr. Vaux had in nowise allowed his enthusiasm to 

 outrun his discretion. 



On June 21, 1803, when his father was but twenty-four 

 years old, Timothy Abbott Conrad was born. His mother was 

 then staying at the home of her father, four miles from Tren- 

 ton, in Burlington County, New Jersey. To this birthplace 

 young Conrad became so strongly attached that he yearly made 

 pilgrimage thereto, even when no representative of the family 

 lived there. In his purely literary writings he so frequently 

 refers to the place that he was once twitted about it, but with- 

 out effect. 



"Timothy," remarked an old Friend, "was thy grandfather 

 the only man who ever lived in the country ? " 



" Other men exist in the country, but no one else lived like 

 my grandfather," he replied. 



Brought up, when with his parents, in so scientific an at- 

 mosphere, and when at his birthplace so delightfully sur- 

 rounded not only by congenial kinsfolk, but Nature in her 

 most attractive guise, it is little wonder that Conrad became 

 a naturalist. Mr. Fraley tells me that, when a youth in early 

 teens, Conrad was the " president " of an " Academy of Sci- 

 ence " of which he, Mr. Fraley, was "secretary," and that it 

 was conducted with all the decorum and good faith of the 

 institution after which it was modelled. 



Conrad was educated at select schools under the superin- 

 tendence of Friends, but really educated himself, so far as the 

 " higher branches " were concerned, acquiring without a teacher 

 a thorough knowledge of Latin, Greek, and French. His skill 

 in drawing was remarkable and early developed. He not only 



