THE BOTANISTS OF I'HILADKLPHIA. 261 



school was broken uj), and Mr. Ellis returned to Potsdam. 

 While with Taylor he saw by chance a notice of Ravenel's 

 Fungi Caroliniani Exsiccati, the first thing of the kind ever 

 issued in America. While at college he had frequently 

 noticed the agarics, but not knowing where to get books or 

 information concerning fungi, he let them alone. But upon 

 seeing the notice of Ravenel's collection, he wrote to him 

 and then commenced a correspondence (in 1857), inter- 

 rupted only by the war, which lasted till Ravenel's death. 

 He continued collecting phanerogams until 1870, at the 

 same time giving gradually more and more attention to 

 fungi. In 1870 he sold his phanerogamic collection, con- 

 taining about 1000 species, to St. Lawrence University, 

 Canton, New York. 



In May, 1853, he moved to Poughkeepsie, entering a 

 Mr. Bartlett's boarding-school as classical teacher, and 

 stayed two years. While there he and Professor Buckhout, 

 now of State College, Centre County, Pennsylvania, col- 

 lected plants on Saturday, and, said he : " On Sundays, too, 

 if we could steal away, for Mr. Bartlett was very pious." In 

 February, 1855, in company with his sister, Mrs. L. B. 

 Doud, late of Plattsmouth, Nebraska, he left Poughkeepsie 

 for Charleston, South Carolina, with the intention of teach- 

 ing school there. He called on one of the professors in the 

 South Carolina College to seek information on the subject. 

 Said he : "I told him that I had come South to teach and 

 make a home there. He at once asked me whence I came, 

 and when I answei'ed from New York, he replied, while 

 slowly swinging in his revolving office chair, ' \^>11, the 

 state of feeling between the North and South is such that I 

 doubt very much whether you will succeed.' " And he 



