TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB REMINISCENCES 
By NATHANIEL Lorp BRITTON 
The New York Botanical Garden 
I gladly contribute reminiscences of the years immediately 
following my election to the Club in 1877, while I was a student 
in the School of Mines, with especial reference to members of the 
Club known to me during that period. 
Dr. George Thurber was president in 1877, and for many years 
afterward the meetings were held at the herbarium rooms of 
Columbia College, at 49th Street and Madison Avenue. Dr. 
Thurber, long editor of the American A griculturist, had a fertile 
fund of botanical information of all kinds and stimulated discus- 
sion on nearly every topic presented at the meetings. Mr. P. V. 
LeRoy, who had been an assistant of Dr. Torrey, was curator of 
the Torrey Herbarium and he carefully guarded the collection 
during his incumbency and increased it by the purchase of many 
valuable sets of plants. 
I entered the School of Mines in 1875. Dr. Torrey died in 
January, 1873. While I was being prepared for the School of 
Mines at the Staten Island Academy, I was taken on several 
occasions to Columbia College by my father to see Dr. Drisler, 
and on one of these visits I was told where the herbarium was lo- 
cated and a professor was pointed out to me as the renowned Dr. 
Torrey. This did not make much impression on me as a boy, but 
later, when becoming familiar with Dr. Torrey’s portrait, I recol- 
lected the incident. Mr. J. J. Crooke, then resident of Great 
Kills, Staten Island, an all-around naturalist who accumulated 
large collections, induced my parents to send me to the School of 
Mines, and told me much about Dr. Torrey. Mr. Crooke was 
Treasurer of the Club for a period. 
Mr. William H. Leggett, who founded the Bulletin of the Club 
in 1870, was still its editor; he was an enthusiastic field and her- 
barium botanist, a highly successful teacher, and a fine linguist 
