362 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 



States was never carried further ; although a Compendium, a 

 pocket volume for the field, containing brief characters of 

 the species which were to have been described in the second 

 volume, along with an abridgment of the contents of the first, 

 was issued in 1826. Moreover, long before Dr. Torrey could 

 find time to go on with the work, he foresaw that the natural 

 system was not much longer to remain, here and in England, 

 an esoteric doctrine, confined to profound botanists, but was 

 destined to come into general use and to change the character 

 of botanical instruction. He was himself the first to aj)ply it 

 in this country in any considerable publication. 



The opportunity for this, and for extending his investiga- 

 tions to the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains on their 

 western boundary, was furnished by the collections placed in 

 Dr. Torrey 's hands by Dr. Edwin James, the botanist of 

 Major Long's expedition in 1820. This expedition skirted 

 the Rocky Mountains belonging to what is now called Colo- 

 rado Territory, where Dr. James, first and alone, reached the 

 charming alpine vegetation, scaling one of the very highest 

 summits, which from that time and for many years afterward 

 was appropriately named James's Peak ; although it is now 

 called Pike's Peak, in honor of General Pike, who long be- 

 fore had probably seen, but had not reached it. 



As early as the year 1823, Dr. Torrey communicated to the 

 Lyceum of Natural History descriptions of some new species 

 of James's collection, and in 1826 an extended account of all 

 the plants collected, arranged under their natural orders. 

 This is the earliest treatise of the sort in this country, ar- 

 ranged upon the natural system ; and with it begins the his- 

 tory of the botany of the Rocky Mountains, if we except a 

 few plants collected early in the century by Lewis and Clark, 

 where they crossed them many degrees farther north, and 

 which are recorded in Pursh's Flora. The next step in the 

 direction he was aiming was made in the year 1831, when he 

 superintended an American reprint of the first edition of 

 Lindley's " Introduction to the Natural System of Botany," 

 and appended a catalogue of the North American genera 

 arranged according to it. 



