414 John Torrey. 
influence. It was the fruit of those few but precious years 
which, seasoned with pecuniary privation, are in this country 
not rarely vouchsafed to an investigator, in which to prove his 
quality before he is haply overwhelmed with professional or 
professorial labors and duties. 
In 1824, the year in which the first volume (or nearly half) 
of his Flora was published, he married Miss Eliza Robinson 
Shaw, of New York, and was established at West Point, hav- 
ing been chosen Professor of Chemistry, Mineralogy and Geol- 
ogy in the United States Military Academy. Three years 
later he exchanged this chair for that of Chemistry and Botany 
(practically that of Chemistry only, for Botany had already 
been allowed to fall out of the medical curriculum in this 
country) in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New 
York, then in Barclay Street. The Flora of the Northern 
States was never carried further; although a “ Compendium,” 
a pocket volume for the field, containing brief characters of 
the species which were to have been described in the second 
volume, along with an abridgement of the contents of the first, 
was issued in 1826. Moreover, long before Dr. Torrey could 
find time to go on with the work, he foresaw that the natural 
system was not much longer to remain, here and in England, 
an esoteric doctrine, confined to profound botanists, but was 
destined to come into general use and to change the character 
of botanical instruction. He was himself the first to apply 1t 
in this country in any considerable publication. 
The opportunity for this, and for extending his investiga: 
tions to the great plas and the Rocky Mountains on their — 
western boundary, was furnished by the collections placed m 
Dr. Torrey’s hands by Dr. Edwin James, the botanist of Major 
Long’s expedition in 1820. This expedition skirted the Rocky 
Mountains belonging to what is now called Colorado Territory, 
where Dr. James, first and alone, reached the charming alpine 
vegetation, scaling one of the very highest summits, which from 
that time and for many years afterward was appropriately 
named James’ Peak ; although it is now called Pike’s Peak, m 
honor of General Pike, who long before had probably seem; 
but had not reached it. 
