122 Rhodora [Jink 



Portland quarries with a pencil hung about his neck on a string and 

 his hands full of great sheets of brown paper, on which he made 

 strange drawings of marks in the stone. His memorials are an 

 author-citation or two in current manuals, an occasional reference, 

 not disrespectful, in works on special groups, a half-dozen little- 

 known pamphlets — and a place in John Fiske's essay on "Some 

 cranks and their foibles." His herbarium is probably his most 

 solid and valuable achievement. 



Various elements may have contributed to the meagerness of his 

 accomplishment. One was his multiplicity of interests. By pro- 

 fession a physician and teacher, plants, insects and birds, chemistry, 

 mineralogy and meteorology, local history, Indian antiquities and 

 language, and finally geology, engaged his interest by turns and 

 detracted one from another. Lack of money for publication and 

 resultant discouragement may have had their effect. But, looking 

 through what remains of his work, one seems to find a deeper reason 

 1 — a certain inconclusiveness, a lack of selective and co-ordinating 

 faculty. When he is not supported by the definite structure of a 

 systematic botanical arrangement his articles have a way of trailing 

 off vaguely at the end. He does not finish. That is the usual fate 

 of a mind such as we may suppose his to have been — keen, but dis- 

 organized, better at observation than at correlating and interpreting 

 its results. 



Joseph Barratt was born at Little Hallam, Derbyshire, England, 

 January 7, 1790. l His immediate family seems to have been large, 

 for he mentions four brothers and a sister, and of ancient descent, 

 since he records finding "particulars respecting his ancestors" in 

 the Domesday Book. In 1810, he began the study of medicine at 

 London and in 1816 was practising at Leicester. In 1819, for what 

 reason he does not state, he left England for the United States, sailing 

 from Lherpool on the ship Remittance, Capt. Silas Holmes. 



The voyage to New York lasted seven weeks. Soon after his 

 arrival, he went to Philipstown, N. Y., where he settled down to the 

 practice of "physic" and the botanical exploration of the surround- 

 ing country. To the usefulness of the latter work Torrey pays 

 special tribute in the preface to his Flora of New York; and he might 



1 This is the date given by Barratt himself in his fragmentary diary. The in- 

 scription on his tombstone gives 17'.)7, and the printer of the Catalogue of Coanecti- 

 vut Plants has generously made it 1707. 



