WILLIAM STARLING SULLIVANT. 395 



thus gaining knowledge that he was soon destined to put in 

 practice. 



He was sent to a private school in Kentucky, and entering 

 the Ohio University when that institution opened, received 

 there the rudiments of a collegiate education. He was then 

 transferred to Yale College, from which he was graduated in 

 1823. His father dying in the same year, he was obliged to 

 give up the idea of studying a profession in order to take 

 charge of the large family estate. The property consisted of 

 lands, mills, etc., and required much and varied attention. 

 The care of it required him to become a surveyor and a prac- 

 tical engineer, and to be much engaged in business for the 

 greater part of his life. He became a member of the Ohio 

 Stage Company, whose operations covered a wide field, and 

 before the introduction of railroads afforded the best accom- 

 modations and facilities to the travelling public. He was one 

 of the original stockholders and directors of the Clinton Bank, 

 and for a time its president. 



Mr. Sullivant was not one of those whose predilection for 

 science appeared at ^an early age. He was nearly thirty years 

 old and his youngest brother, Joseph, was already somewhat 

 proficient in botany, conchology, and ornithology before his 

 interest in natural history was aroused. He had married Miss 

 Jane, daughter of Alexander K. Marshall, of Kentucky, and 

 niece of Chief Justice Marshall, and was living in his suburban 

 residence in a rich floral district. His wife had died within a 

 year after marriage, leaving him an infant daughter. 



His first scientific observations were upon the birds. When 

 his attention was directed to botany, by his brother Joseph, 

 he took up the subject with the determination to acquire a 

 thorough knowledge of it. " He collected and carefully 

 studied," says Prof. Gray in the memoir already quoted 

 from, * " the plants of the central part of Ohio, made neat 

 sketches of the minuter parts of many of them, especially of 

 the grasses and sedges, entered into communication with the 

 leading botanists of the country, and in 1840 he published A 

 Catalogue of Plants, Native or Naturalized, in the Vicinity of 

 Columbus, Ohio (63 pages), to which he added a few pages of 

 valuable notes. His only other direct publication in phanerog- 



* Read before the National Academy of Sciences, April 22, 1875. 



