318 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 



the " Journal of the Boston Society of Natural History," etc. 

 As it had always been the greatest pleasure, we might say the 

 business of his life to assist others, so now friends and corre- 

 spondents from all parts of the world hastened to place in 

 his hands the fullest sets of their collections in this difficult 

 genus ; and he was able to study, in the unrivaled caricologi- 

 cal collection he thus formed, and the various public and pri- 

 vate herbaria to which he had access, almost all of the six 

 hundred or more species which the genus was computed by 

 him to comprise, to compare them in numerous specimens of 

 their various forms, and to examine them, group after group, 

 with untiring and closest scrutiny. At length, early in the 

 year 1858, he gave to the world (literally gave to the world) 

 the first volume of his great work, entitled " Illustrations of 

 the Genus Carex," a folio volume with two hundred plates, 

 admirably representing about that number of species. A very 

 large proportion of them were North American species, in 

 which he naturally always took a special interest. In the 

 letter of dedication of this work to his friend, John Amory 

 Lowell, Esq., of Boston, Dr. Boott states that his original 

 design " was limited to the Carices of North America," but 

 that the large collections brought by Dr. Hooker from the 

 East Indies, and placed in his hands for study, caused him to 

 extend his plan, and to endeavor to illustrate the genus at 

 large. With characteristic modesty he makes no allusion to 

 the years of labor and the large amount of money (savings 

 from a moderate income by a simple mode of life) which the 

 volume had cost him ; the drawings, engravings, and letter- 

 press having been produced at his sole individual expense, 

 and the larger part of the copies freely given away. Nor did 

 he put forth any promise to continue the work. But in 1860 

 Part Second quietly appeared, without a word of preface. 

 This contains 110 plates. Two years after, this was followed 

 by Part Third, with 100 plates, making 410 in all ; and it is 

 understood that the materials of a fourth volume are left in 

 such forwardness that they may perhaps be published by his 

 surviving family. 



Our own estimate of this work has been recorded in the 

 pages of this Journal, as the successive volumes were received. 



