JOHN TORREY. 365 



came the third and the last ; for Dr. Torrey's associate was 

 now also immersed in professorial duties and in the conse- 

 quent preparation of the works and collections which were 

 necessary to their prosecution. 



From that time to the present the scientific exploration of 

 the vast interior of the continent has been actively carried on, 

 and in consequence new plants have poured in year by year 

 in such numbers as to overtask the powers of the few work- 

 ing botanists of the country, nearly all of them weighted with 

 professional engagements. The most they could do has been 

 to put collections into order in special reports, revise here and 

 there a family or a genus monographically, and incorporate 

 new materials into older parts of the fabric, or rough-hew 

 them for portions of the edifice yet to be constructed. In all 

 this Dr. Torrey took a prominent part down almost to the last 

 days of his life. Passing by various detached and scattered 

 articles upon curious new genera and the like, but not forget- 

 ting three admirable papers published in the "Smithsonian 

 Contributions to Knowledge " (Plantae Fremontianae, and 

 those on Batis and Darlingtonia), there is a long series of 

 important, and some of them very extensive, contributions to 

 the reports of government explorations of the western coun- 

 try, — from that of Long's expedition, already referred to, in 

 which he first developed his powers, through those of Nicollet, 

 Fremont, and Emory, Sitgreaves, Stansbury, and Marcy, and 

 those contained in the ampler volumes of the Surveys for Pa- 

 cific Railroad routes, down to that of the Mexican Boundary, 

 the botany of which forms a bulky quarto volume, of much 

 interest. Even at the last, when he rallied transiently from 

 the fatal attack, he took in hand the manuscript of an elabo- 

 rate report on the plants collected along our Pacific coast in 

 Admiral Wilkes's celebrated expedition, which he had pre- 

 pared fully a dozen years ago, and which (except as to the 

 plates) remains still unpublished through no fault of his. 

 There would have been more to add, perhaps of equal impor- 

 tance, if Dr. Torrey had been as ready to complete and pub- 

 lish, as he was to investigate, annotate, and sketch. Through 

 undue diffidence and a constant desire for a greater perfec- 



