252 BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 
all sides, and had recently entered upon a friendly and instruc 
tive correspondence with Dr, Torrey, which was continued until 
his death. : 
here I may remark, parenthetically, that judging from a 
list of plants, still preserved, that I had sent to him, one might 
fancy that the distinguishing characters of genera and species, not- 
ably of Carex and Seleria, were not then quite so clearly defined 
as they are now. Indeed, the student of to-day, with a royal road 
before him, and all inequalities removed, can not appreciate the 
difficulties encountered by a lone botanist in the wilds of Florida 
fifty years ago. 
Mr. Croom was then on one of his annual journeys from New 
Berne, North Carolina, the residence of the family, to his planta- 
tion in the adjoining county of Leon; but previously to settling 
permanently in that county, he had rented a plantation on the 
west bank of the Apalachicola river opposite the calcareous cliffs 
at Aspalaga on the east bank, which at that time were covered by 
a dense grove of Torreya, and it was here, probably in 1833, tha 
he first saw it, 
Recognizing it as likely to be new, at least to our Flora, he 
sent.a flowerless branch to Mr. Nuttall, who briefly noticed it 10 
the Journal of the Philadelphia Academy, Vol. VII, p. 96, with 
the suggestion that it might be the Taxus montana, of Mexico. 
t the time of our first meeting in 1835 it appears that he 
had made the acquaintance of Dr. Torrey in New York, an had 
supplied him with Specimens in flower and fruit; and it was 
during the previous summer, and at the latter’s request for addi- 
tional information. and material, that my connection with the 
tree commenced. 
‘ is first impressions were, I believe, that it might be a ot 88 
cies of Podocarpus, but these, after a minute analysis of all ts 
parts, he soon abandoned, and came to the conclusion that oa iad 
stituted the type of a new genus among the Taxvid Conifers, # 
conclusion also entertained by his friend and correspondent, Dr. 
Arnott, of Edinburgh, to whom he had communicated specimens (0- 
gether with a report of his analyses, and the latter, after disp 
of the Torreya of Sprengel, which was proved to be a species ° 
Clerodendron, and ignoring sundry lesser Torreyas, transferred the 
name to the Florida tree, and ‘published a full deseription ea 
figure of it in Annals of Natural History, Vol. I, p. 126, une 
the name of Torreya taxifolia, : os 
Since then, other species, from widely distant regions, igh 
been added to the genus, which, like the Florida tree, appea? 
