476 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 



married. Admitted to the bar in 1831, he established him- 

 self at Buffalo in 1836, and practised his profession most 

 acceptably until the year 1854, when he became judge of the 

 superior court of that city. This honorable position he con- 

 tinued to hold with entire approbation until January, 1878, 

 when he retired under the provision of the constitution upon 

 attaining the age of seventy years. Then he resumed the 

 practice of the law for two or three years ; but at length he 

 took up his residence in Albany, partly for the more conven- 

 ient rendering of his service as a regent of the university 

 of the State, and its vice-chancellor, but mainly for investi- 

 gating and editing the papers and writings of his great-uncle 

 George Clinton. On the afternoon of the 7th of September he 

 took an accustomed walk in the Rural Cemetery of Albany, 

 and there he died, probably quite instantaneously ; for when 

 his body was found, two or three hours later, some withered 

 sprays of White Melilot, which he had gathered, were still 

 clasped in his hand. 



Judge Clinton's professional life need not here be con- 

 sidered. I did not know him, but knew of him, as a botanist 

 in his younger days. About the year 1860, after buying a 

 botanical book for his daughter, the turning over its pages 

 revived an almost forgotten delight ; and when his attention 

 was again given to the flowers he had so long neglected, we 

 soon came into correspondence. " I might have become a 

 respectable naturalist,"' he writes, " but was torn from it in 

 my youth. ... To become a botanist is now hopeless ; I am, 

 and must remain a mere collector. But then I collect for 

 my friends and for the Buffalo Society of the Natural Sci- 

 ences. If I can please my friends and help the Society it 

 pleases me. I want it to succeed. Money I cannot give it, 

 and I give it all I can, the benefit of my example and pleasant 

 labors." An instructive and pleasant, and on his part a 

 sprightly correspondence it has been, and most ardent and 

 successful were his efforts in the development of the Society 

 of the Natural Sciences over which he presided, and espe- 

 cially of its herbarium which he founded. In the spring of 

 1864 he wrote : " To-morrow I believe I shall be able to mail 



