CHARLES WILKINS SHORT. 1 



Dr. Charles Wilkins Short died at his residence at 

 Louisville, Kentucky, on the 7th of March last, in the sixty- 

 ninth year of his age. He was born in Woodford County of 

 that State, on October 6, 1794, was educated in the school 

 of Mr. Joshua Frye, near Danville, — a distinguished teacher 

 of those days, — pursued his professional studies mainly in 

 Philadelphia, where he took the degree of M. D. from the 

 University of Pennsylvania in the year 1815. For ten years 

 he devoted himself to the practice of medicine, until in the 

 year 1825 he was called to the chair of Materia Medica and 

 Medical Botany in the Transylvania University at Lexington, 

 where he contributed to the reputation of that celebrated 

 school. Relinquishing medical practice, for which he had no 

 liking, he devoted his powers with zeal and success to the 

 more congenial duties of his professorship, and to the cultiva- 

 tion of botany, the favorite pursuit of his life. At the close 

 of the year 1838 he removed, along with some of his distin- 

 guished colleagues, to Louisville, filling the same chair in the 

 University of that city until 1849, when he retired from 

 public functions. The remainder of his honorable life was 

 passed at Hayfield, at his tasteful residence near Louisville, in 

 the bosom of his family ; in the exercise of kindly but unos- 

 tentatious hospitality and of all good offices ; in quietly enjoy- 

 ing and in causing others to enjoy the blessings of a hand- 

 some fortune, to which by inheritance, combined with the 

 fruits of his own industry, he now attained, and in the culti- 

 vation of the "amiable science" to which he was devotedly 

 attached. 



Dr. Short's botanical publications were neither large nor 

 many. They were chiefly articles contributed to the " Tran- 



1 American Journal of Science and Arts, 2 ser., xxxv. 451. (1863.) 



