172 Rhodora [July 



to wait when the good doctor spied a particularly fine and rare speci- 

 men by the roadside. He made the first and in some eases the only 

 local collection yet known of certain of the rarer plants of Connecticut, 

 such as Carer trichocarpa, Draba caroliniana, Solidago canadensis, 

 Gnaphalium purpureum and Aster radvla — the last at Guilford. 

 But he seems to have missed entirely what we now know as the chief 

 floristic features of his neighborhood — the isolated stations for Arr- 

 naria groenlandica, var. glabra* on the hills south of Middletown and 

 Tor Carex subulata in the sand-plains to the north. 



At different times he collected and studied especially Cardamine 

 pennsyhanica, Acer, various species of Aster and Solidago, Verbena, 

 Lespedeza and Desmodium, the group of Eupatorium purpureum and, 

 most notably, Carex and Salix. On the last genus his most consider- 

 able botanical work was done. He studied it as opportunity offered, 

 for ten years, growing willows in the gardens of obliging friends, 

 watching them in the wild and making many and complete specimens 

 in Bower, fruit and leaf. By 1S:U he had in manuscript and read 

 before the New York Lyceum a "monograph of North American 

 willows" which he planned to publish with drawings of all the species. 

 Lack of the necessary funds prevented this project from being carried 

 out — a state of things still not unfamiliar to scientists. Even so, 

 his work attracted the attention of Sir William Hooker, then engaged 

 in preparing his Flora of British North America, and, we may well 

 believe, puzzled by the complex forms which even his comparatively 

 small collection of willows presented. He sent to Barrett all his 

 North American specimens to be named and invited him to contri- 

 bute the treatment of the genus to his flora. This Barrett declined 

 to do in detail, but he did present ;i synopsis of sections which Hooker 

 Used and notes on the species from which Hooker published three 

 new species and two varieties ascribed to Barrett as author. Later, 

 in 1840, Barrett himself published a title page and set of printed 

 labels with introduction and notes intended to go with bound volumes 

 of exsiccatae such as were fashionable in those days. The specimens 

 which were to accompany them were, with one exception, all of his 

 own collecting and from the vicinity of Middletown. 



Since all of Barrett's publications are rare, a somewhat detailed 



1 The earliest known collection of this is by Merrill Hitchcock, May 4, 1878, L'. r > 

 days before (hat of H. I.. Osborn cited in the Catalogue of Connecticut Plants. 



