WILLIAM STARLING SULLIVANT. 



and immense pains were expended) are simply exquisite and 

 wholly unrivalled; and the scientific character is acknowl- 

 edged to be worthy of the setting." Most of the time which 

 Mr. Sullivant could devote to science in the last few years of 

 his life was given to the preparation of a second or supple- 

 mentary volume of the I cones. The plates were finished, the 

 descriptions partly written out, and it was to have been printed 

 in the spring in which he died. 



Mr. Sullivant was attacked with pneumonia in January, 

 1873, about the time of his seventieth birthday, and, although 

 making a partial recovery, died from the effects of the disease 

 April 30. He had married Caroline E. Button, who survived 

 him. Four sons and two daughters were born to them. 



He bequeathed all his bryological books and his exceed- 

 ingly rich and important collections and preparations of 

 mosses to the Gray Herbarium at Harvard University. The 

 rest of his botanical library, his choice microscopes, and other 

 collections, were left to the State Scientific and Agricultural 

 College, then recently established at Columbus, and to the 

 Starling Medical College, founded by his uncle, of which he 

 was himself the senior trustee. 



The American Academy of Arts and Sciences elected Mr. 

 Sullivant to membership in 1845 ; he was also an associate of 

 the other chief scientific societies of this country and of several 

 in Europe. The honorary degree of Doctor of Laws was 

 conferred upon him by Gambier College, while Torrey and 

 Gray honoured him early by bestowing the name Sullivantia 

 Ohionis upon a rare and modest plant discovered by him in 

 his native State, and belonging to the same order (saxifrages) 

 with the currant, syringa, and hydrangea. 



For nearly forty years Sullivant corresponded with Asa 

 Gray, also collecting with him and co-operating in research 

 whenever practicable. He is often mentioned in Gray's Let- 

 ters. When Lesquereux, who had been Gray's curator at 

 Cambridge, left him to go and assist the Western bryologist, 

 Gray wrote in a letter to Torrey : " They will do up bryology 

 at a great rate. Lesquereux says that the collection and 

 library of Sullivant in muscology are * magnifique, superbe, the 

 best he ever saw.'" Under date of December 6, 1857, Gray 

 writes to W. J. Hooker : " Your first letter is now gone to Sul- 

 livant, because you speak of him so handsomely, and say that 



