272 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [OCTOBER 
developed. Each holiday and Saturday when free from school duties 
he might be found engaged in his favorite study, wandering over the 
Illinois prairies. His Latin teacher, one of that honored class of 
botanist physicians to whom we owe most of the early botanical work 
of this country, assisted him much in his botanical recreations. 
In 1865 his parents returned to Baton Rouge, where he continued 
his studies under the tutorship of Professor McGruder, but soon after- 
ward left school to enter a drug store in Baton Rouge, where he began 
to read medicine, and soon surprised his preceptor, Dr. Day, by the 
rapidity with which he acquired knowledge. 
He was soon a resident student in the Charity Hospital of New 
Orleans, and in the New Orleans School of Medicine, graduating in 
1870, when he was only a little over twenty-one years old, and 
receiving an offer of an assistant professorship in his alma mater. Dr. 
Joor’s duties were to begin the following autumn, but the disastrous 
end of a law suit, which closely concerned the college, resulted in 
closing its doors forever. Through these years of hard study the 
young physician by no means lost his interest in botany, but kept 
adding collections from the southern flora to those made in Illinois. 
In October 1870, Dr. Joor obtained the position of Assistant 
Quarantine Surgeon at Ship Island Station. Here and at other 
places along the Gulf coast the rich flora so attracted him that he 
sometimes even endangered his life to obtain desirable plants. His 
health, broken down by study, was much restored by this outdoor life, 
and he soon entered into private practice in Thibodeaux, Louisiana. 
In 1873 we find our physician-botanist practicing his profession 
on the Texas prairies in the midst of the rich flora of eastern Texas, 
first at Harrisburg and then at Birdston. Here, when Nealley was 
collecting grasses in Texas, they met and were together at every 
Opportunity in their work. But the life of a practicing physician on 
the plains was too much for his naturally weak constitution, and for 
years he was hindered by severe illness from carrying on his work. 
In preparation for the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial 
Exposition at New Orleans in 1884-5, Dr. Joor was appointed 
Assistant Commissioner for Texas to prepare an exhibit of woods and 
other plants from that state. At the close of the Exposition, where 
he had charge of the collection he had made, Dr. Joor prepared the 
woods for a permanent exhibit at the state capital, where they now 
are. At the same time a smaller collection was made for the Geo- 
