Dr. Murfee's gifts and disposition led him to the adoption of the vocation of teaching, and he was called first to Lynchburg, Va., in that capacity; then, later, to the chair of physical science in Madison College, Pennsylvania. In 1860 he came to Alabama as professor of mathematics and commandant of cadets at our state university. During the war that followed, soon after his advent into the state, he became the lieutenant colonel of the Forty-first Alabama Regiment, but resigned to resume his duties at the University of Alabama. Near the close of the war, when the state was overrun by the federals, he commanded the cadets in an engagement at Tuscaloosa. After the close of the war Dr. Murfee was engaged as architect to design and erect new buildings for the university, in place of the magnificent edifices destroyed by the enemy, to which stupendous task he set his hand and mind, recommending at the same time a new scheme of university organization, all of which was accepted by the board of trustees, but he was thwarted in his efforts by the reconstruction régime. Called in 1871 to the presidency of Howard College, then at Marion, which institution had writhed in the throes incident to those troublous times, he brought it to the front as one of the best institutions of its grade then in the South. On the removal of Howard to Birmingham, in 1887, Dr. Murfee was tendered the presidency of the college in its new location, but preferred to remain at Marion, where he founded, in the original college buildings, the Marion Institute, of which he was the superintendent until 1906, when he retired from active service on an annuity from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. This annuity was granted on the basis of "long and distinguished service to the cause of education in Alabama." In 1882, Dr. Murfee was appointed by President Harrison, a member of the board of visitors to the West Point Military Academy. After his retirement from active service, Dr. Murfee devoted his time leisurely to the development of the educational foundation at Marion, that it might become a source of perpetual strength to the state and to the South. On April 23, 1912, Dr. Murfee died at Miami, Fla., at the advanced age of seventy-nine years. ABRAM J. RYAN