A. Gray — Botanical Necrology of 1885. ' 13 



which he entered in 1831, graduating in 1835. His fondness 

 for botany was developed while he was in college, although, so 

 far as we can learn, he had no teacher. The opportunity of 

 gratifying this predilection in an inviting region may have de- 

 termined his acceptance, almost immediately after graduation, 

 of an offer to teach in a private family at Natchez, Mississippi. 

 Within a year pecuniary reverses of his employer terminated 

 this engagement. At this time there was a flow of immigra- 

 tion into Texas, then an independent republic; and Mr. 

 Wright, joining in it, in the spring of 1837, made his way 

 from the Mississippi to the Sabine, and over the border, chiefly 

 on foot, botanizing as he went. Making his headquarters for 

 two or three years at a place then called Zarvala, on the Neches, 

 he occupied himself with land-surveying, explored the sur- 

 rounding country, " learned to dress deer-skins after, the manner 

 of the Indians, and to make moccasins and leggins," " became 

 a pretty fair deer-hunter," and inured himself to the various 

 hardships of a frontier life at that period. When the business 

 of surveying fell off he took again to teaching; and, in the 

 year 1844, he opened a botanical correspondence with the 

 present writer, sending an interesting collection of the plants of 

 Eastern Texas to Cambridge. In 1845 he went to Eutersville 

 in Fayette County, and for a year or two he was a teacher in a 

 so-called college at that place, or in private families there and 

 at Austin, 'devoting all his leisure to his favorite avocation. 

 In the summer of 1847-8 he had an opportunity of carrying 

 his botanical explorations farther south and west. His friend 

 Dr. Veitch, whom he had known in Eastern Texas, raised a 

 company of volunteers for the Mexican war, then going on 

 (Texas having been annexed to the United States), and gave 

 Mr. Wright a position with moderate pay and light duties. 

 This took him to Eagle Pass on the Mexican frontier, where he 

 botanized on both sides of the river. He returned to the 

 north in the autumn of that year, with his botanical collec- 

 tions, and passed the ensuing winter in Connecticut and at 

 Cambridge. 



In the spring of 1849. Mr. Wright returned to Texas, and, 

 at the beginning of the summer, with some difficulty obtained 

 leave to accompany the small body of U. S. troops which was 

 sent across the unexplored country from San Antonio to El 

 Paso on the Eio Grande. Notwithstanding some commenda- 

 tory letters from Washington, no other assistance was afforded 

 than the conveyance of his trunk and collecting paper. He 

 made the whole journey on foot, boarded with one of the 

 messes of the transportation train, and endured many priva- 

 tions and hardships. The return to the seaboard, in autumn, 

 was by a rather more northerly route and under somewhat less 



