JOSEPH TRIMBLE ROTHROCK 207 



three months I was soldiering again. It is fair 

 to say that the service was neither very onerous 

 nor bloody. I returned in time to take my degree 

 of Bachelor of Science in July, 1864. 



" That fall I entered the medical side of the 

 University of Pennsylvania. The course of lec- 

 tures was hardly over before I was requested by 

 the Smithsonian Institution to join an expedition 

 to British Columbia and Alaska, and under the 

 auspices of the Collins Overland Telegraph 

 Company (the Atlantic Cable had thus far been 

 a failure) to secure telegraphic communication 

 by the North Pacific regions with Asia. Our 

 leader was Robert Kennicott, Major Frank Pope 

 my immediate commander. Thus I was engaged 

 from June, 1865, to June, 1866. The scientific 

 results of our part of the expedition were not 

 much, as I was mainly assigned to other than 

 scientific work; and what plants I collected were 

 lost in transportation down the Fraser River. 



" I began to study medicine again in the win- 

 ter of 1866 and 1867, in Philadelphia, and took 

 my M. D. in the spring of 1867, going imme- 

 diately afterwards to the State Agricultural Col- 

 lege as Professor of Botany, but remaining there 

 only two years. 



" In May, 1869, I married Martha E. May, 

 to whose influence in shaping my subsequent life 

 I must pay a well-deserved tribute; and in my 

 17 



