18<s(;.] CHARLES CIIUISTOPIIER FROST. * 11'. 
We know that lie suddenly left school in his fifteenth year, for at that 
time he was struck a severe blow by a hot-tempered teacher, and the high- 
spirited lad gathered up his school books, picked up the broken ruler and 
carried them home as evidence of the indignity he had received and the 
resolution he had formed and from that day never placed himself at the 
mercy of any school teacher. 
Although l;e soon entered into business with his father, he also began 
a course of^ reading and study, not for any particular end, but to satisfy 
the cravings of mind of a born scholar. lie took up mathematics with 
ardor, and Hutton’s mathematical series, which he had mastered at 
nineteen, are still on his bookshelves. He entered with equal interest 
into chemistry and physics, into meteorology and geology, while his col¬ 
lections of insects, shells, and finally his very considerable collections of 
plants, show the wide variety of his tastes and acquirements. Text books 
on all these subjects are in his library at present. He owned some im¬ 
portant special reports and monographs in meteorology, entomology and 
geology, while in cryptogamic botany his library is fairly well equipped 
with the standard works and papers necessary to the extended study of 
the subject. It was probably never very fully supplied, however, for the 
purposes of original investigation. Beside the manuals of Berkeley and 
Cooke, tliere still remain some of the works of Persoon, Schweinitz, 
Pries, Greville, Nylander, DeBary and Woronin, Rabenhorst, Tucker- 
man, Peck and other workers in fhe lower cryptogamia. There are a 
considerable number of water-color drawings of Boleti, in which genus 
Mr. Frost was especially interested, most of them apparently copied from 
Krombholz and from Sowerby. There are also a number of Mr. Charles 
d. Sprague’s exquisite pen-and-ink drawings of Agarics^ accompanied by 
descriptions, sent to his friend, no doubt, to assist him in the absence of 
plates and authentic herbarium specimens. There are MS. descriptions 
of the Xew England fungi which he supposed to be new. Some of these, 
afterwards discovered to be already described, have the true specific 
name endorsed in pencil across them. He and his friend Sprague each 
])urchased a valuable microscope of French manufacture, and he has many 
drawings and measurements of spores preserved, for supplying the defi¬ 
ciencies, probably, in the descriptions of the older works. 
His own collections, chiefly of fungi, together with most of his im¬ 
portant botanical works and some of his botanical correspondence, remain 
in the attic room, occupied by him as a study for so many years, in his 
house in Brattleboro’. The fungi, properly labeled, were largely put up 
in paper boxes, and arranged, according to their supposed affinities, on 
shelves about the room. Others were attached to the sheets of blank 
books. Unfortunately, they have been considerably disturbed by those 
who have called to look them over since the death of Mr. Frost, and some 
are in danger of being badly injured if not destroyed. Among the other 
IRipers, the writer found a manuscript catalogue of the cryptogamic spec¬ 
imens in Mr. Frost’s own herbarium, with the locality of each added. 
