earlier maturity, but it could never be adapted to our climate, and after a few years of trial was rejected. It bore no balls.

120. In 1851, I received eight varieties from Panama, supposed to have been brought from the coast of Chili, in the regular coast trade. One of these was exactly like the last sort above noticed. One other was afterwards extensively cultivated and sold by me under the name of Rough Purple Chili. It was the parent of my seedling,-the Garnet Chili. The six remaining varieties were all too late for this climate, one of them perhaps by only a month, but the others probably by two or three months. They nearly all bore balls, especially the first year, and some of them enor mously. Four of these six showed considerable disease the first year on both vine and tuber, the season having been very bad, and the seed much bruised and sprouted when received. All these six sorts except one, speedily ran down in health. The one excepted was soon sent to Northern Vir ginia, where it was said to flourish. I have not heard from it recently.

121. In December, 1852, a neighbor returning from the west coast of South America, brought me three varieties. One was bought in the market at Callao, and one in the market at Valparaiso. These were both supposed to have been grown in the mountains, and to have been brought to the markets of the cities. They were both entirely too late in maturity, and gradually declined in health. The third variety brought by my neighbor, he dug in the wild bushy pastures within a mile of Valparaiso. When planted (I had five hills of it), it spread its young shoots in the soil exactly like quack grass and the white elder, extending itself some six feet each side of the original row. It flowered very early and abundantly, but was badly diseased, the August of 1853 being a period of severe disease. It grew to the very close of the season, but never set a tuber, and it was of course entirely lost the first year.

122. This record of importation is sufficiently discouraging, one only out of twelve sorts, having had any permanent value. To make this mode of restoring the potato availing, varieties should be sought by one well acquainted with our climate and the length of our seasons; and only such sorts should be selected in South America as are capable of maturing in our short seasons, and as have there the best reputation for hardiness.

123. Beside these I have no particular knowledge of any recent importations from South America. In past years I have seen a few sorts said to have been imported from England and Wales. The Prince Albert, which is identical with the English Fluke, and probably also with the St. Helena, is the only one which has succeeded tolerably well with me. It is very far inferior in hardiness to the Garnet Chili and some others of my lings.

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124. Theoretically, I doubt the propriety of importing sorts from climates very different from our own. The air and soil, and seasons of a country, stamp themselves on the vegetation (especially that which is herbaceous and perennial) grown there, and usually fit it to those circumstances better than to any others.

SECOND REMEDY FOR POTATO DISEASE, REPRODUCTION.

125. This method has the highest recommendation, viz., analogy with our treatment of most other plants. There have been many attempts made to

originate new and valuable seedlings in our own, as well as in the old countries, but with what results I do not know precisely. Of the possibly fifteen or twenty old sorts with which I have, during my life, been acquainted, there was but one which I knew to be a somewhat recent seedling. I doubt not, however, that there are many such within the extended limits of our country.

126. Indeed, there seems to have been a very imperfect appreciation of the difficulties in the way, and of the true modes of procedure. The fact, too, that the potato, like the apple and grape, affords often proportionately but one valuable new variety to hundreds of seedlings, as usually produced, was equally unknown. The attempts have been usually made on far too small a scale, and have not been continued long enough before publishing results; the fact now appearing that no results are fully reliable until four or five years of growth have been made by a new sort. Even then the results are not trustworthy in respect to hardiness, which is ever the prime qualification of a new sort, if those four or five years have exhibited unusual uniformity of weather.

127. Since 1848, I have originated from 13,000 to 15,000 new seedlings. A failure to count them accurately during two or three of the years makes the total number uncertain. These many thousand sorts have been included in about ninety-three families-that is, the balls producing them have been derived from so many sources, my rule having been never to . mix balls from different sorts. In nineteen cases, however, I have used balls from the same source two or even four times in different years. This reduces the actual number of distinct families to about seventy-four. At the first autumnal digging I have often selected one-half of all the sorts in a family, but sometimes much less. Each fall at digging, I have con tinued to reject every sort whose health, yield, and habits I did not like. Those sorts which passed through every test approved have been selected for sale and diffusion at the end of the fourth or fifth season. Even then I have often subsequently found that my test culture had not been sufficiently protracted and severe, and that I had given out inferior sorts. Many of the hopeless families were from the balls of the Bogota, and others from the importation of 1851. The seedlings from both these importations were utter failures, except from the rough purple Chili, even when reproduced from the balls of the first seedling. They, however fine the shapes of the first year, degenerated in the second and third years into every monstrosity of shape, as though incapable of civilization in our climate.

128. Of the seventy-four distinct families of seedlings which I have originated, by far the largest proportion have failed to yield me one valuable sort, and have been entirely rejected. Indeed, many which, at the end of such a protracted test culture, I have retained, were so retained not on account of their fitness to be commended to public acceptance, but as sources from whose balls I hoped to gain new varieties in the next gen-. eration of seedlings.

129. The preceding record of numerous families and thousands of individual sorts, is the proof not of my wisdom, (whatever it may be of my patient efforts,) but of my inexperience. With my present knowledge of this specialty of culture, I would not touch one-half of those seventy-four

families of seedlings, that is, I would not have sown the seed from the balls, as now knowing, in the light of dear bought experience, that they would yield me nothing valuable.

130. This enterprise of reproduction has been long, costly and perplexing, accompanied by many mistakes and failures on my part, resulting from the fact that there was no personal or recorded experience within reach, by which I could be guided. The whole enterprise has been conducted under a constant pressure of other business, partly the management of a market garden, in the early years of it, and the duties of my profession at all times.

131. Nor do I know any old variety, of such hardiness, combined with other important qualities, as fitted it to be a source from whose balls I could draw new varieties, which could be at all compared with my Pale Blush Pink-eye, Garnet Chili and Pink-eye Rusty-coat. Many old sorts gave seedlings of fine size and beauty, but not of vigorous health. The creation of bases for new families of seedlings has cost labor and delay.

132. Nor is the enterprise yet fully consummated. The public need early sorts to take the place of old and failing varieties, such as the Early Mountain June, Early Pink-eye or Dickman, Early Strawberry, &c. It is precisely at this point that my experiments have been least successful, unless, indeed, my seedlings of 1860 shall result in containing such varieties, a question which will soon be settled.

133. The public must decide whether the potato, in my hands, has been restored to the health and reliability of fifty years ago. I flatter myself that in the use of seed of such varieties as the Garnet Chili and Pink-eye Rusty-coat, here, and of the Andes, farther south, the potato is now culti vated as reliably as it ever was. Other sorts, such as the Cuzco, Central City, New Kidney and Copper Mine, have also a good degree of hardiness.

134. Whatever may be judged of my success, and that of others who may possibly have been laboring in the same way, one thing I think sufficiently apparent; occasional reproduction of the potato from the ball, on a liberal scale of numbers, in a wise manner, and from well selected bases, will keep the world possessed of varieties as hardy as the nature of the case admits, on the principles of well ascertained pathology. The subsequent cultivation of these sorts by a wise selection of soil and exposure, and in a just mechanical manner, will give abundant crops of cheap and valuable tubers.

NOTE.-April, 1864. On passing this Essay into my care for publication, Mr. Goodrich desired me to state that had he had strength to re-write, he might have smoothed the style, elaborated further some parts of the Essay, made additional notes on mildew, &c., but that on the whole, the Essay has his deliberate endorsement. JOHN P. GRAY.

MEMOIR OF THE REV. CHAUNCEY E. GOODRICH.

BY JOHN P. GRAY, M. D.

The Rev. Chauncey Enoch Goodrich was born September 19, 1801, in what at that time was the eastern part of Troy, Rensselaer county, N. Y., now called Brunswick.

He was the youngest son of Dr. Enoch Goodrich and Rebecca Gale. His ancestor, William Goodrich, came from Great Britain to this country with an uncle and brother, and settled in Weathersfield, Conn., about 1647. William's youngest child was David, and one of the youngest of David's seventeen children was Benjamin, who married Hannah Olmsted, of the same family with the late Professor Olmsted of Yale College.

Five of the children of this marriage were soldiers in the Revolutionary War, and Enoch, the youngest, who was the twelfth son and fourteenth child, became a physician. He was born in 1764. He studied medicine in Stanford, Dutchess county, N. Y., where he married Rebecca Gale. They subsequently removed to Troy, where the subject of this sketch was born, one of the youngest of nine children.

Dr. Enoch Goodrich moved, in the early part of 1806, to Elbridge, Onondaga county, which was then part of the town of Camillus. The country was but partially settled, and was very sickly. The family were all attacked by the diseases incident to new countries, and his wife died during the first year, and the next year his own death left his children orphans.

When not quite six years old, young Chauncey found a home with his uncle by marriage, Col. Nathan Beckwith, of Rhinebeck, Dutchess county, where he lived till the age of fourteen. His constitution, originally delicate, and shattered by disease contracted in his western home, and by the hardships endured there, made him an object of tender solicitude with his kind uncle and aunt, and turned his thoughts, at an early age, from the hard work of the farm to the study of medicine. But when he was just thirteen his hopes were blasted by the death of his eldest brother Henry, who had succeeded his father in the practice of medicine, having (almost unaided) studied several languages and various branches of science. Soon after this, commenced the struggle of life.

In 1815, leaving his uncle, he went to his relatives in Brunswick, and began to labor in a tannery there, working so hard as to retard his growth and injure his health.

In 1817, he made a profession of religion in the church under the pas toral care of Rev. John Younglove, of Brunswick. After this his time was divided between work, study and teaching school.

In 1820, he began a course of classical study with a view to the minis try, commencing with Mr. Reuben Farnham of Elbridge, going on with his

uncle, Rev. George W. Gale of Adams, Jefferson county, and finishing at Lansingburgh Academy. He entered the junior class at Union College, Schenectady, in 1823.

His small patrimony (of less than three hundred dollars) being now spent, he was glad to avail himself of some assistance rendered him by the Presbytery of Troy (under whose care he placed himself), by the Ladies' Benevolent Society of Troy, and by numerous kind friends.

During all his course of study he practiced the most rigid economy, usually boarding himself, and often receiving with thankfulness a loaf of bread, or some other article of food.

He graduated in 1825, having taken a good standing in his class. While in college he was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa and Philomathean societies. In 1825 he entered Princeton Theological Seminary.

There was a peculiarity in his eyesight which had long been a source of perplexity and annoyance, distorting every object, and rendering the study of Greek and Hebrew very difficult.

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"After leaving college, and on his way to Princeton, (writes R. G., of Massachusetts, in the Country Gentleman of July 7th, 1864,) in going down the bay of New York he found that he could readily distinguish the transverse spars of the shipping, but could not the vertical A gentleman who wore concave glasses was present, and upon borrowing them he could see the masts, but the yards became indistinct. He concluded that the lenses of his eyes were not spherical, but spheroidal, the curvature of the horizontal section being right, and of the vertical too great; and that a lens ground upon a cylinder of a curvature sufficient to overcome the excessive curvature of the vertical section of his eyes would afford him relief." While at Princeton, he invented, for this imperfection, a planoconcave cylindrical lens, and perfected it through the kindness of Messrs. John McAllister & Son, of Philadelphia, who had glasses ground for him in France. These same glasses he used thirty-six years, until his death. He wrote to Professor Silliman about his peculiar vision, and I think some notice of it was put in the American Journal of Science for 1828.

While at the seminary he continued to receive aid from the Presbytery of Troy, and was also assisted by the education fund of the Institution. He graduated in 1828.

Among his fellow students at Princeton, were Nicholas Murray, David H. Riddle, Cyrus Mason, Erskin Mason, William S. Plumer, J. Holmes Agnew, George W. Bethune, John C. Young of Kentucky, Peter J. Gulick, missionary to the Sandwich Islands, George B. Whiting, missionary to Syria, and other missionaries. His own thoughts were turned to the foreign field and he offered his services to the American Board, but his lack of health obliged him to relinquish all thought of such employment.

He was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Troy in the autumn of 1828, and went immediately to teach in the Oneida Institute, a manual labor school at Whitesboro, under the charge of his uncle, Rev. George W. Gale, afterwards the founder of Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois. While there he preached often at New York Mills. In 1830 he was ordained and settled as pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Salisbury, Herkimer Co., where he had been preaching several months. The salary was four hun