BuRNHAM : Charles Horton Peck 



35 



extensively from the mossy knolls under the spruces and balsams 

 about the border of the swamp. 

 • One could thrust a pole for eight or ten feet through the soft 

 ooze in those days. The marsh was well known to the Indians, 

 who came from the Hudson to gather cranberries ; and Dr. Peck's 

 great-grandmother once went with them and is said to have been 

 the first white woman to visit the marsh. It lies about twelve 

 hundred feet above the Hudson, in the northeastern part of the 

 town of Sand Lake; a walk of five miles from Averill Park, and 

 about three fourths of a mile from the German Hotel. One 

 finds both black and red spruce on the marsh, although, accord- 

 ing to Sargent, the latter species is confined to uplands. A list 

 of the plants of Cranberry Marsh is given in the N. Y. State Mus. 

 Bull. 150: 71-72. 191 1. 



In 1841, Dr. Peck made his first visit to Albany and ten years 

 later he entered the State Normal School, which was located 

 where the Christian Brothers Academy now stands, at the rear of 

 Geological Hall. While at the Normal, he met a yodng lady at 

 his boarding-house who was to take a class in botany and natural 

 history in a city Jewish school, and desired some one to go to 

 the woods and fields to hunt flowers for class study. By acci- 

 dent, the lot fell to Dr. Peck, who consented to go for her, and 

 thereby awakened an interest in the subject which shaped and 

 directed his whole future career. " Thus it often happens that 

 apparently trifling circumstances give a color and character to the 

 history of an individual which are far reaching in their influence 

 and most important in their final results." 



Dr. Peck was one of the first to join Prof. J. H. Salisbury's 

 voluntary class in botany, taking it as an extra study, as it was 

 not at that time included in the curriculum of the Normal School. 

 Graduating from the Normal in 1852, on returning home, he was 

 put to work in the hayfield, but all his spare time was spent in 

 collecting and analyzing plants. During the winter of 1852-1853, 

 he successfully taught a large district school, having an average 

 attendance of about sixty pupils, in Poestenkill, Rensselaer 

 County. 



Dr. Peck now determined to prepare himself for a college 

 course, and took his classical preparatory course at the Sand 



