230 Rhodora [November 



Lawson (London, 1700, 1714, 1718), and has been variously estimated. 

 Thus, .Tared Sparks (North American Review, xxiii. 288, Oct., 1826) 

 remarks concerning it "a more daring piece of plagiarism was never 

 executed," while J. Bryan Grimes, in a prefatory note accompanying 

 a facsimile reprint issued by authority of the Trustees of the [North 

 Carolina] Public Libraries in 1911, calls attention to the fact that 

 although largely based upon the earlier work of Lawson, Blickell's 

 Natural History is expanded to nearly twice the length and contains, 

 especially on the medical side, much original matter. 



According to Grimes, in the prefatory note above mentioned, Dr. 

 John BrickeU and his brother the Rev. Matthias Hrickell came to 

 Carolina with Gov. Burrington. John settled at Edenton. He was 

 on the grand jury of the whole province in 1731, and, being appointed 

 about that time a member of a mission to the Cherokee Indians, took 

 part in an expedition to the interior which is thought to have pene- 

 trated well into what is now Tennessee. Soon after this journey he 

 returned to England and his subsequent life is wholly unknown. 

 Besides his Natural History he wrote a Catalogue of American Trees 

 and Plants which will bear the Climate of England. According to 

 Allibone (1. c.) this was a folio published in London in 1739. How- 

 ever, Britten & Boulger give the place of publication as Dublin and 

 the date as 1745, which would indicate that this work also passed 

 through more than one edition. 



To differentiate, by way of summary, the two men who have been 



so generally confused, they were as follows: 



1) An earlier Dr. John Brickell, who settled at Edenton, Xortli 

 Carolina, in the earlier half of the 18th century, author of a somewhat 

 grotesque and largely compiled Natural History of North Carolina, 

 published (according to Allibone) in 1723, with better known editions 

 in 1737, 1739, and 1743; also a Catalogue of American Trees and 

 Plants which will bear the Climate of England, published in London, 

 1739, and in Dublin, 174."). 



2) A later Dr. John Hrickell, born in County Louth, Ireland, in 

 or about 1749, for thirty years resident in Savannah, Georgia, where 

 he died 22 December, 1S09, an acute observer of the local vegetation, 

 a man highly respected, author of several medical and botanical 

 communications to the then prominent Medical Repository of New 

 York, a friend of Muhlenberg, Eraser, and of Elliott, who dedicated to 

 him the composite genus Brickell id. 



Gray Hekhakipm. 



