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students. In 1803 there appeared about the first work designed 

 especially for the latter class, an elementary work on botany by 

 Barton. Writing of 1824, Darlington says : "About this time 

 some of the schools in the Northern States began to make a 

 profession of teaching botany, and a demand for suitable books 

 for this purpose arose. Accordingly, a number, such as they 

 were, soon appeared. Among the most successful was a Manual, 

 compiled by Professor Amos Eaton, of Troy, New York." Of 

 the character of the educational works of the period, little need be 

 said, since it is sufficiently indicated in that of the work in which 

 botanists were then engaged. This sort of botanical teaching 

 entered upon its most active stage with the appearance of Gray's 

 Elements of Botany, in 1836, a work that is still being sold upon 

 an extensive scale, and this, in your speaker's opinion, very greatly 

 to the advantage of botany, in spite of the many books of different 

 character, the use of which we so greatly enjoy. The publica- 

 tion, for the use of students, of text-books on structural botany, 

 and later on morphology, in connection with manuals on local 

 floras, became very popular, and of incalculable value in interest- 

 ing people in the study of plants. 



We must now pass from this general consideration of local 

 botanical development up to the middle of the last century, and 

 follow some special influences proceeding from the growth of the 

 botanical department of Columbia College. During the period 

 when Dr. Torrey was at its head, that department was very actively 

 engaged in educational work, though this was of the peculiarly 

 restricted sort characteristic of the times. About the time of his 

 death in 1873, his herbarium and library, which he had previously 

 maintained in his home, came into the possession of Columbia, 

 together with the herbaria of Crooke, Chapman and Meissner. To 

 these, collections from various parts of the Avorld, and especially 

 from those parts of the United States then being explored, were 

 rapidly added, and a very large and important herbarium soon 

 grew up ; but no professor of botany was appointed to succeed 

 Dr. Torrey, and the herbarium was neglected by the curator in 

 charge. A very large part of it was not classified, nor even 

 named, and lay in the form of a small mountain of dusty bundles 



