212 LIFE AND LABORS OF PROF. JOHN TORREY. 



liouor, and until at the close he re-entered the city upon "Evacuation 

 Day," when he retired with the rank of captain. Moreover, the father 

 soon followed the son, and became quartermaster of the regiment. 

 Captain Torrey, in 1791, married Margaret Nichols, of Isew York. 



The subject of this biographical notice w^as the second of the issue of 

 this marriage, and the oldest child who survived to manhood. He was 

 born in JSTew York on the 15th of August, 1790. He received suck 

 education only as the public schools of his native city then aftbrded, 

 and was also sent for a year to a school in Boston. When he was fif- 

 teen or sixteen years old, his father was appointed fiscal agent of the 

 state-prison at Greenwich, then a suburban village, to which the family 

 removed. 



At this early age he chanced to attract the attention of Amos Eaton, 

 who soon afterward became a well-known pioneer of natural science, 

 and with whom it may be said that popular instruction in natural 

 history in this country began. He taught young Torrej' the structure 

 of flowers and the rudiments of botany, and thus awakened a taste and 

 kindled a zeal which were extinguished only with his jjupil's life. This 

 fondness soon extended to mineralogy and chemistry, and ijrobably 

 determined the choice of a profession. In the year 1815, Torrey began 

 the study of medicine in the otfice of the eminent Dr. Wright Post, and 

 in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, in which the then famous 

 Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Hosack were professbrs of scientific repute, he 

 took his medical degree in 1818 5 opened an office in his native city; and 

 engaged in the practice of medicine with moderate success, turning the 

 Vv'iiile his abundant leisure to scientific pursuits, especially to botany. 

 In 1817, while yet a medical student, he reported to the Lyceum of 

 TS"atural History — of which he was one of the founders — his Catalogue 

 of the Plants growing spontaneously within thirty miles of the city of 

 ISTew York, which was published two years later ; and he was already, 

 or very soon after, in correspondence with Kurt, Sprengel, and Sir James 

 Edward Smith abroad, as well as with Elliott, Nuttall, Schweinitz, and 

 other American botanists. Two mineralogical articles were contributed 

 by him to the very first volume of the American Journal of Science and 

 Arts, (1818-'19,) and several others appeared a few years later in this 

 and in other journals. 



Elliott's sketch of the botfiny of South Carolina and Georgia was at 

 this time in course of publication, and Dr. Torrey planned a counter- 

 part systematic work upon the botany of the Northern States. The 

 result of this v>'as his " Flora of the Northern and Middle Sections of 

 the United States, i. e., North of Virginia," which was issued in parts, 

 and the first volume concluded in the summer of 1824. In this work 

 Dr. Torrey first developed his remarkable aptitude for descriptive botany, 

 and for the kind of investigation and discrimination, the tact and acumen, 

 which it calls for, Only tbose few — now, alas ! very few — surviving 

 botanists who used this book through the following years can at all 



