preserved in the Museum at Paris, he found an unnamed 
specimen of a plant, with the habit of a Pyrola and the 
foliage of Galax, of which only the leaves and a single 
fruit were preserved, and which had been collected, the 
label stated, in the Hautes Montagnes de Carolinie. This 
specimen at once arrested his attention, and after his 
return two years later from his first botanical journey in 
the Carolina Mountains, where he had searched in vain for 
Michaux’s plant, he ventured to describe it, and to point 
out its probable affinities, dedicating it to Dr. C. W. Short, 
the author of a Catalogue of the plants of Kentucky.” 
“Nothing more was seen of Shortia for a long time, 
although no botanists ever visited the mountains of 
Carolina, and the number in 1866 was considerable, with- 
out carrying a special commission from Cambridge to 
bring back a specimen of Michaux’s little plant, in which 
Dr. Gray’s interest became stronger than ever, when, 
studying in 1858 a collection of Maximovicz’s Japan plants, 
he recognized in that botanist’s Schizocodon wniflorus 
another species of Shortia, almost identical with the Carolina 
plant. These specimens, while they confirmed the validity 
of the genus, threw no further light on the Carolina plant, 
which botanists now hunted for more assiduously than 
ever in all the region in which Michaux was supposed to 
have travelled.”’ | 
In fine, “the search was given up as almost hopeless, 
when, in May 1887, Shortia was found accidentally by a 
youth upon the banks of the Catawba river, near the 
town of Marion, in McDowell County, N. Carolina, at a 
considerable distance from the high mountains to which 
Michaux’s label assigned the plant.” 
Professor Sargent then proceeds to give an account of 
his own re-discovery of Shortia in Michaux’s original | 
habitat, to which he was led for the purpose of gaining 
some insight into the origin of Michaux’s Magnolia cordata. 
It was during a journey of Michaux’s to get roots of this 
latter plant that he visited the head waters of the Keowee, 
and, though weakened by sickness and hunger, he pro- 
ceeded to explore the mountains. On the day of his 
arrival he discovered what he called a nouvel arbuste 4. I. 
dentelés rampant sur la Montagne. Reading Michaux's 
mss. Journal preserved in the Library of the American 
