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most renowned in after years. His first important botanical 
work was performed as a member of a committee appointed by 
the Lyceum to prepare a flora of the region around New York 
City. This report, chiefly Torrey’s work, was afterward pub- 
lished, and was the first of a long series of important works, 
which won for Torrey universal recognition as the foremost 
enn are of his day. e was for many years a pro- 
fessor in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and died at the 
age of 76, universally beloved. 
As Torrey had been one of the young men drawn together by 
the magnetic personality of Dr. Mitchill, for the establishment 
of the Lyceum, so he was in turn the center of attraction for the 
group who, nearly sixty years later, founded the Torrey Botan- 
ical Club. The leading spirit in this later movement was William 
H. Leggett, who acted as editor of the Bulletin of the Club from 
its commencement in 1870 until his death in 1882. The Torre 
Botanical Club as an organization and through the efforts of its 
members was in turn largely a for the establishment of 
the New York Botanical Garden and the erection of the building 
where we are met to-day. 
One of the early botanists of the Lyceum was Professor C. S. 
Rafinesque, and we may as well refer to him at this point, although 
by nature and by fate he was a cosmopolitan. His father was a 
French merchant, his mother was of German extraction, he was 
born in a suburb of Constantinople and spent most of his early 
years in Italy. He was a precocious child, becoming familiar 
with various languages and more or less acquainted with various 
sciences at an early age. As a young man he spent several years 
in America; then several years in Sicily; in 1815 he returned to 
the United States, where he spent the remainder of his life. He 
was in many ways the most striking figure to be found in Ameri- 
can botany; brilliant, but erratic; undervalued, misunderstood, 
and misrepresented by his contemporaries, yet deserving by his 
rashness and the superficiality of his work many of the harsh 
criticisms with which he was assailed. As professor in Transy]- 
sylvania University, he was the first resident botanist west of the 
Alleghanies. His later years were spent in Philadelphia, where 
