G MEMOIR OF DR. EAR VEY. 



desolate iu London. I shall have T. Fisher and Theodore 

 Suliot, with whom I shall be as happy as I could be at so great 

 a distance from home. 



I am quite deficient in having studied mosses so little, but 

 I have a great desire to get acquainted with them. They are 

 not at all so difficult as people imagine. Wert thou to examine 

 a simple moss, thou wouldst be in raptures as I was with the 

 exquisite beauty and regularity of the fringe which surrounds 

 the mouth of the capsule. Most persons think Cryptogamia a 

 difficult and useless study. This might be true in the time of 

 Linnaeus, who but planted the seed. Under Hedwig it sprung 

 up and flourished, but it was reserved for our countryman 

 Hooker to perfect the flower, 



William's brother Jacob had emigrated to America, and 

 settled as a merchant in New York. He was very much 

 attached to his young brother, and frequently wrote to him 

 whilst he was a schoolboy in Ballitore, where he himself had 

 been educated. To these letters William frankly replied, 

 revealing his ideas about his future with perhaps more freedom 

 to this distant brother than to those at home. He tells him that 

 " he is neither fit to be a doctor nor a lawyer, lacking courage 

 for the one, and face for the other, and application for both." 

 Also that the family must give up being distinguished through 

 his " buying cheap and selling dear " (quoting his brother's 

 words), for he feels he is not suited for trade. " All I have 

 taste for is natural history, and that might possibly lead in days 

 to come to a genus called Harveya, and the letters F.L.S. after 

 my name, and with that I shall be content." We subjoin two 

 extracts from his letters at this period. 



To Mr. Jacob Harvey. 



Summerville, 4/7, 1827. 



The utmost extent of my ambition would be to get a 

 professorship of natural history. Indeed, only I must do some- 

 thing, I would rather be a quiet naturalist, and not be paid for 

 teaching that science into whose depths I do earnestly desire to 

 be admitted. But I had better go to London, as there I should 

 be sure of such society as I could not meet with elsewhere, and 



