While he was still a child he would tell on what day in March the first violet bloomed; when the first snowdrop came, and, going back through his years, could tell the very day in spring when the first robin sang near his window.

Soon the boy's collection of plants appealed to the wonder of scholars.

A little later students from foreign countries began to send him strange flowers from Japan and seeds from India.

One midnight while he was lingering o'er his books, suddenly the white page before him was as red with his life-blood as the rose that lay beside his hand.

And when, after two years in Colorado, friends bore his body up the side of the mountains he so dearly loved, no scholar in all our land left so full a collection and exposition of the flowers of that distant state as did this dying boy.