Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/766

694 The Icones Muscorum, however, is Mr. Sullivant's crowning work. It was issued in 1864, and consists of "Figures and Descriptions of most of those Mosses peculiar to Eastern North America which have not been heretofore figured," forming an imperial octavo volume with one hundred and twenty-nine copperplates. "The letterpress and the plates," says Prof. Gray, "(upon which last alone several thousand dollars and immense pains were expended) are simply exquisite and wholly unrivaled; and the scientific character is acknowledged to be worthy of the setting." Most of the time which Mr. Sullivant could devote to science in the last few years of his life was given to the preparation of a second or supplementary volume of the Icones. The plates were finished, the descriptions partly written out, and it was to have been printed in the spring in which he died.

Mr, Sullivant was attacked with pneumonia in January, 1873, about the time of his seventieth birthday, and, although making a partial recovery, died from the effects of the disease on April 30th. He had married Caroline E. Sutton, who survived him. Four sons and two daughters were born to them.

He bequeathed all his bryological books and his exceedingly rich and important collections and preparations of mosses to the Gray Herbarium at Harvard University. The rest of his botanical library, his choice microscopes, and other collections, were left to the State Scientific and Agricultural College, then recently established at Columbus, and to the Starling Medical College, founded by his uncle, of which he was himself the senior trustee.

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences elected Mr. Sullivant to membership in 1845; he was also an associate of the other chief scientific societies of this country and of several in Europe. The honorary degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred upon him by Gambier College, while Torrey and Gray honored him early by bestowing the name Sullivantia Ohionis upon a rare and modest plant discovered by him in his native State, and belonging to the same order (saxifrages) with the currant, syringa, and hydrangea.

For nearly forty years Sullivant corresponded with Asa Gray, also collecting with him and co-operating in research whenever practicable. He is often mentioned in Gray's Letters. When Lesquereux, who had been Gray's curator at Cambridge, left him to go and assist the Western bryologist. Gray wrote in a letter to Torrey: "They will do up bryology at a great rate. Lesquereux says that the collection and library of Sullivant in muscology are 'magnifique, superbe, the best he ever saw.'" Under date of December 6, 1857, Gray writes to W. J. Hooker: "Your first letter is now gone to Sullivant, because you speak of him so