492 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 



he proposed to receive them in the ordinary way. He accord- 

 ingly passed the regular examinations, took the whole routine 

 of the studies of his class, and so was graduated with distinc- 

 tion in the class of 1847, — a unique but characteristic illus- 

 tration of a loyal spirit, becoming " small by degrees and 

 beautifully less." 



His passion for university study was not yet quite satiated. 

 For, two or three years later, he entered the Harvard Divin- 

 ity School, passed through its course of study and prescribed 

 exercises, — among them the delivery of a sermon in one of 

 the Cambridge churches, — and so, in the year 1852, he be- 

 came for the third time an alumnus of Harvard. 



In May, 1854, he married in Boston Sarah Eliza Sigourney 

 dishing, who survives him, without offspring. Removing 

 that year to Amherst, he built with excellent taste, upon a 

 beautiful site, the house which has ever since been their 

 abode. Although mainly devoted to botanical investigations, 

 his first official connection with Amherst College was that of 

 lecturer in history, then that of professor of oriental history, 

 down to the year 1858, when he was collated to the chair 

 of botany, which he held to the end of his life, although of 

 late years relieved from the duty of class instruction. The 

 college did itself the honor to confer upon its professor the 

 decree of LL. D. 



We cannot say when or how Professor Tuckerman became 

 a botanist. But at an early period he was intimate with Dr. 

 Harris, then University librarian, and with the ardent Wil- 

 liam Oakes of Ipswich, upon whom, through Dr. Osgood of 

 Danvers, descended the mantle of Manasseh Cutler, of Essex 

 County, the earliest New England botanist. 



He must have been attracted to the Lichens almost from 

 the beginning ; for his first publications were upon Lichens 

 of New England, lar^elv those of his own collecting in the 

 White and Green Mountains, in two papers, one communi- 

 cated to the Boston Natural History Society, in 1838 or 1839, 

 the other in 1840. These were soon followed by papers on 

 Phsenogamous botany, namely : one " On Oakesia a new 

 Genus of the Order Empetrese," a contribution made while 



