442 Miscellaneous Intelligence. 



took prizes in Latin composition and Latin translation. After 

 graduating be taught school, first in Scantic, Conn., and then on 

 Long Island, and later in Rhode Island. While at Scantic he 

 studied medicine two months with Dr. Watson of that place and 

 again in the summer of 1849 with Dr. Sill of Windsor, and the 

 next winter, attended lectures on medicine at the New York 

 University. He left there in the spring of 1850 with, as he writes 

 a friend, a diminished respect for medical practitioners, but with 

 a high respect for the science. We next hear of him as teaching 

 school in Allentown, Pa., and then in Tarrytown, N. Y. His 

 diffidence made this work very uncongenial to him, and no one 

 was more conscious of this than himself. 



In 1852 his uncle, the Rev. Dr. Julius A. Reed of Davenport, 

 Iowa, one of the founders and Trustees of Iowa College, invited 

 him to that institution, where he remained as tutor two years. 

 Before he had gone to Iowa, an elder brother, Dr. Louis Watson, 

 a physician in practice in Quincy, 111., had invited him to study 

 in his office and enter practice there. He went there in July, 

 1854, studied with his brother, practiced medicine to some extent, 

 and handled his cases well. But the practice was probably dis- 

 tasteful to him, for he gave it up in 1856, much to the regret of 

 some of his patients. He then went to Greensboro, Ala., as 

 Secretary of the Planters' Insurance Company of which his 

 brother Henry Watson was President. He remained there until 

 after the war broke out in 1861, and then came North and was 

 engaged with Dr. Henry Barnard of Hartford in literary work, 

 chiefly on the Journal of Education. When Dr. Barnard went 

 to Washington as Commissioner of Education this service ceased, 

 and in January, 1866, Mr. Watson entered the Sheffield Scientific 

 School of Yale and pursued the studies of chemistry and min- 

 eralogy until the close of that college year and returned for a 

 short time in the autumn. Here he worked very diligently in his 

 scientific studies, but held little intercourse with his fellow stu- 

 dents. Botany formed no part of his instruction while here. 

 His studies were probably undertaken with reference to a possi- 

 ble residence in California, to which his thoughts Avere then 

 turned, and he sailed for that State by way of Panama probably 

 in March, 1867. He was at Sacramento late in April, and spent 

 two or three months in the Sacramento Valley. 



The Pacific Railroad was then in process of construction, and 

 Clarence King had just entered upon the geological exploration 

 of the 40th parallel. His party had left Sacramento in June, and 

 had begun active work in the western part of the Great Basin. 

 While Mr. Watson was in New Haven in 1866 Mr. King was 

 also there a part of the time, and the proposed exploration of 

 the region to be crossed by the much talked of Pacific Railway 

 was the subject of frequent comment with the professors and 

 students. The next year when Mr. Watson was at Woodville 

 in the Sacremento Valley he heard that the expedition had set 

 out, and he resolved to join it. From the terminus of the rail- 



