Vol. 6 No. 7 



TORREYA 



July, 1906 



A HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE DEVELOPMENT 

 OF BOTANY IN NEW YORK CITY 



LIBRARY 



By Henry H. Rusby NEW yc.K^■■ 



(Continued from page m) 



Dr. Thurber, our first president, was characterized by profound 

 conscientiousness and great determination. He began life as a 

 pharmacist, in Providence, and developed a strong leaning toward 

 chemistry, of which subject he became a teacher. His love of 

 botany grew out of his study of drugs. In 1850 he went as 

 botanist, quartermaster and commissary to the Mexican Boundary 

 Commission, the botanical results of which were published by 

 Torrey in 1859. He received the degree of A.M. from Brown 

 University, and the honorary degree of M.D. from the Univer- 

 sity Medical College, of this city. He was in the U. S. Assay 

 Office for two years and left from motives of honor. He was at 

 various times a teacher in Cooper Union, the New York College 

 of Pharmacy and Michigan Agricultural College, and was presi- 

 dent of several horticultural societies and of this Club until 

 1880. For twenty-two years he was editor of the American 

 Agriculturist , in which capacity he exerted an influence over the 

 character of young people, in the agricultural sections of the 

 country, that was and is of great national importance. His most 

 important contribution to botanical work was perhaps the main- 

 tenance of a botanical garden at Passaic, New Jersey, in close 

 relations with that of Harvard. His private fortunes were melan- 

 choly. Captured by the whirl of speculation in real estate that 

 followed the civil war, he purchased land at an excessive price, and 

 spent the rest of his life in a painful struggle honorably to dis- 

 charge his financial obligations. 



[No. 6, Vol. 6, of ToRREVA, comprising pages 101-132, was issued June 20, 

 1906.] 



