214 LIFE AND LABORS OF PROF. JOHN TORRE Y. 



the United States species of tbe vast genus Garex, which has ever since 

 been a favorite study in this country. His friend, Yon Schweinitz, of 

 Bethlehem, Pa., placed in his hands and desired him to edit, during 

 the author's absence in Europe, his monograph of North American 

 Oarices. It was published in the Annals of the New York Lyceum, in 

 1825, much extended, indeed almost wholly rewritten, and so much to 

 Schweinitz's satisfaction that he insisted that this classical monograph 

 "should be considered and quoted in all respects as the joint production 

 of Dr. Torrey and himself." Ten or eleven years later, in the succeed- 

 ing volume of the Annals of the New York Lyceum, appeared Dr. Tor- 

 rey's elaborate monograph of the other North American Cyperacese, 

 with an appended revision of the Carices, which meanwhile had been 

 immensely increased by the collections of Eichardson, Drummoud, &c., 

 in British and Arctic America. A full set of these was consigned to his 

 hands for study (along with other important collections) by his friend, 

 Sir William Hooker, upon the occasion of a visit which he made to Europe 

 in 1833. But Dr. Torrey generously turned over the Carices to the late 

 Professor Dewey, whose rival Caricography is scattered through forty 

 or fifty volumes of the American Journal of Science and Arts ; and so 

 had only to sum up the results in this regard, and add a few southern 

 species at the close of his own monograph of the order. 



About this time, namely, in the year 183G, upon the organization of a 

 geological survey of the State of New York upon an extensive plan, Dr. 

 Torrey was appointed botanist, and was required to prepare a flora of 

 the State. A laborious undertaking it proved to be, involving a heavy 

 sacrifice of time, and postponing the realization of long-cherished plans. 

 But in 1843, after much discouragement, the Flora of the State of New 

 York, the largest if by no means the most important of Dr. Torrey's 

 works, was completed and published, in two large quarto volumes, with 

 one hundred and sixty-one plates. No other State of the Union has 

 produced a flora to compare with this. The only thing to be regretted 

 is that it interrupted, at a critical period, the prosecution of a far more 

 important work. 



Early in his career, Dr. Torrey had resolved to undertake a general 

 flora of North America, or at least of the United States, arranged upon 

 the natural system, and had asked Mr. Nuttall to join him, who, how- 

 ever, did not consent. At that time, when little was known of the 

 regions west of the valley of the Mississippi, the ground to be covered 

 and the materials at hand were of comparatively moderate compass ; 

 and in aid of the northern part of it, Sir William Hooker's Flora of 

 British America — founded u})on the rich collections of the Arctic ex- 

 plorers, of the Hudson Bay Company's intelligent officers, and of such 

 hardy and enterprising pioneers as Drummond and Douglas — was 

 already in progress. At the actual inception of the enterprise, the 

 botany of Eastern Texas was opened by Drummond's collections, as 

 well as that of the coast of California by those of Douglas, and after- 



