1873.] 313 [Hunt. 
the United States assay-office, a post which he held, con- 
stantly discharging its duties, till his death. He was also, 
for the latter years of his life, a trustee and a professor of 
Columbia College, to which, in 1860, he presented his large 
botanical library, and his extensive and valuable herbarium. 
He however retained the use of these during his life-time, 
and making his home near them, in the college where they 
were deposited, spent many hours daily in the last years of 
his life, in the study of his favorite science; for while his 
official duties have made him known to the world outside as 
a chemist and mineralogist, it is on his botanical labors that 
his scientific fame will chiefly rest. 
He early gave himself to the study of botany, and as long 
ago as 1819 published a catalogue of the plants growing 
within a radius of thirty miles of New York. Fifty years 
later his botanical friends celebrated the anniversary of its 
publication, by a banquet given to the Nestor of their sci- 
ence, in the decorations of which the Zorreya taxifolia, 
belonging to a new genus of Taxacea which had been named 
for him, was not forgotten. A Flora of the Northern and 
Middle States in 1824, a remarkable monograph of the 
Cyperacea in 1836, the Flora of the State of New York, in 
two volumes, in 1842-44, with various Botanical Reports 
of the results of United States exploring expeditions from 
1828 to 1858, comprise the chief part of his published con- 
tributions to botany. He moreover edited with his’ friend, 
Dr. Asa Gray, the Flora of North America, and has, we 
believe, left behind him a large amount of manuscript notes 
on botanical subjects, nearly ready for publication. 
But while thus doing such a vast amount of original work 
in this department of natural history, he was wont to say 
playfully, that botany was his amusement, and chemistry 
and mineralogy his profession, as they had been his first love. 
In the early part of his professional life, he published several 
valuable papers relating to these studies, including observ:- 
tions and analyses of various American minerals, but 
although he never abandoned such pursuits, and habitually 
