104 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [JANUARY 
Here Dr. Peck is said to have become ‘‘an accomplished classical 
scholar, but his real interest lay all the time in the world of plants and 
flowers’? (The Knickerbocker Press, Albany, July 12, 1917). It is 
evident, therefore, that for some time Dr. Peck had been engaged in the 
collection and study of plants. It may be a matter of interest to bota- 
nists to know the circumstance which first aroused his interest in botanical 
investigation which was so soon to supersede his interest in the classics. 
On two different occasions the writer had the opportunity of collecting 
and studying fungi for a week with Dr. Peck, first in the Adirondack 
Mountains at Lake Piseco in 1902, and then at Port Jefferson, Long 
Island, in 1904. While at Lake Piseco Dr. Peck told the writer of the 
first impulse he received in the direction of the study of the lower plants. 
It was while teaching school at Sand Lake (probably in Schram’s Col- 
legiate Institute). One of his duties in those days appears to have been 
to help keep up the fire. While putting wood into the stove he was con- 
stantly attracted by the lichens and mosses growing on the bark. This 
gave him a desire to know something about the mosses. He got into 
communication with several students of the mosses at that time, prob- 
ably LEsquEREUx' first, and later with C. F. Austrn. 
* Rept. N.Y. State Cab. Nat. Hist. 19:42. 1866. 
