WILLIAM HERBST 



1833-1907 

 Sparassis Herbstii PECK 



The first human glimpse of William Herbst 

 amongst the scanty biographical details obtain- 

 able is as a boy riding with his father, Dr. Fred- 

 erick W. Herbst, to visit patients and beguiling 

 the time by gathering and studying flowers in the 

 fields during the long waiting at sick men's doors. 

 The father had come over from Saxony in 1825, 

 and William was born in Reading, Bucks County, 

 Pennsylvania, on September 24, 1833. His only 

 text-book was an old German one, but " he was 

 fascinated with the fanciful names given to the 

 specimens " and after a while got a botanical 

 work by Mrs. Lincoln. He went to two or three 

 academies and finally to one in East Hampton, 

 Massachusetts, where he studied botany under 

 Dr. Edward Hitchcock and began to form an 

 herbarium, which he continued while studying 

 medicine with his father before he went to Jeffer- 

 son Medical College, Philadelphia, where he 

 took his M. D. (1855). 



Finally he settled down to practise in the 

 (then) small village of Trexlertown, Lehigh 



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