18 John Torrey. 
in hand the manuscript of an elaborate report on the plants 
collected along our Pacific coast in Admiral Wilkes’s celebrated 
expedition, which he had prepared fully a dozen years ago, and 
which (except as to the plates) remains still unpublished 
through no fault of his. There would have been more to add, 
perhaps of equal importance, if Dr. Torrey had been as ready 
to complete and publish, as he was to investigate, annotate and 
sketch. Through undue diffidence and a constant desire for a 
greater perfection than was at the time attainable, many inter- 
esting observations have from time to time been anticipated by 
other botanists. 
All this botanical work, it may be observed, has reference to 
the Flora of North America, in which, it was hoped, the 
diverse and separate materials and component parts, which he 
and others had wrought upon, might some day be brought 
together in a completed system of American botany. 
It remains to be seen whether his surviving associate of 
nearly forty years will be able to complete the edifice. To do 
this will be to supply the most pressing want of the science, 
and to raise the fittest monument to Dr. Torrey’s memory. 
In the estimate of Dr. Torrey’s botanical work, it must not 
be forgotten that it was nearly all done in the intervals of a 
busy professional life; that he was for more than thirty years 
an active and distinguished teacher, mainly of chemistry, and 
in more than one institution at the same time; that he devoted 
much time and remarkable skill and ‘Sodhaniens to the practical 
applications of chemistry, in which his counsels were constantly 
sought and too generously given; that when, in 1857, he 
exchanged a portion, and a few years later the whole, of his pro- 
fessional duties for the office of U. S. Assayer, these requisi- 
tions upon his time became more numerous and urgent.* in 
addition to the ordinary duties of his office, which he fulfilled 
to the end with punctilious faithfulness (signing the last of his 
*It ought to be added, that, when the Government Assay Office at New York 
was established, the Secretary of the Treasury selected Dr. Torrey to be its Super- 
intendent,—which would bave given to the establishment the advantage of @ sci- 
entific head. But Dr. Torrey resolutely declined the less laborious and better paid 
post, and took in preference one the emoluments of which were much below his 
worth and the valuable extraneous services he rendered to the Government,— 
ee teed bat may 
