636 
of Cincinnati. His mother was also of an 
old New York family. The boy was edu- 
cated in his native city, and from Amos 
Eaton he learned ‘ the structure of flowers 
and the rudiments of botany.’* An educa- 
tion must have a broadening influence, and 
as he grew in years his interest in botany 
extended to chemistry and mineralogy, and 
finally to medicine, in which he was gradu- 
ated from the College of Physicians and 
Surgeons in 1818. The practice of his 
chosen profession was not altogether con- 
genial to him, and turning again to botany 
he began his Flora of the Northern and 
Middle United States. He published a por- 
tion of this work in 1824, and then accepted 
an appointment as assistant surgeon in the 
United States Army in order to become 
professor of chemistry, mineralogy, and 
geology in the United States Military Acad- 
emy at West Point. 
His abilities as a teacher received ample 
recognition, for in 1827 he was called to the 
chair of chemistry and botany in the Col- 
lege of Physicians and Surgeons, which he 
held until 1855. In 1830 he accepted the 
professorship in chemistry in Princeton, 
which he retained until 1854. These vari- 
ous collegiate appointments were then made 
emeritus, for on the establishment of the 
United States Assay Office in New York, 
in 1853, he was called to the charge of that 
place and held it until his death, twenty 
years later. 
Gray says: 
Tt must not be forgotten that he was for more 
than thirty years an active and distinguished 
teacher, mainly of chemistry, and in more than 
one institution at the same time; that he de- 
voted much time and remarkable skill and 
judgment to the practical applications of chem- 
istry, in which his counsels were constantly 
sought and too generously given.+ 
The foregoing quotation becomes espe- 
* Gray, op. cit,, p. 268. 
} Idem, p. 273. 
SCIENCE 
[N. S. Von. X. No. 253. 
cially significant when we remember that 
his botanical work, yet to be referred to, 
was accomplished in the intervals of his 
busy life. In 1836 he was appointed bota- 
nist to the State of New York, and in 1843 
issued the two quarto volumes of which it 
has been so well said: ‘ No other state of 
the Union has produced a flora to compare 
with this.”’** Prior to the organization of 
the special scientific bureaus in Washing- 
ton, with their large staffs of competent 
specialists, it was the practice of the gov- 
ernment to refer the material collected by 
exploring expeditions to those most compe- 
tent to report on it, and the botany in those 
years for the most part was assigned to 
Torrey. He reported on the specimens col- 
lected by Captain John C. Frémont in the 
expedition to the Rocky Mountains in 1845 ; 
on the plants gathered by Major William 
H. Emory on the reconnaissance from Fort 
Leavenworth, Missouri, to San Diego, Cali- 
fornia, in 1848; on the specimen secured by 
Captain Howard Stansbury on his expedi- 
tion to the Great Salt Lake of Utah, in 
1852; on those collected by Colonel John 
C. Frémont in California, in 1853 ; on those 
brought back from the Red River of Louis- 
jana, by Captain Randolph B. Marcy, in 
1853; and those obtained by Captain 
Lorenzo Sitgreaves on his expedition to the 
Zufii and Colorado Rivers, in 1854. Then 
followed his elaborate memoirs on the 
botany of the various expeditions connected 
with the Pacific Railroad Survey during 
the years 1855-1860 ; the Mexican Boundary 
Survey in 1859, and the Colorado River 
Expedition in 1861. It was this succession 
of magnificent monographs on the flora of 
North America that gained for him an im- 
perishable reputation among the greatest 
of American botanists. 
His associates have honored his name by 
giving it to certain species of shade trees, 
and so all round the world Torreya taxifolia, 
* Idem, p. 271. 
