19314]  Weatherby,— Old-time Connecticut Botanists,— I 87 
Hartford, July, 1861” contains two species, one Lolium perenne, the 
other Cynosurus cristatus. The latter is one, and by far the earlier, 
of two known collections from the state. "The Hartford station has 
long been extinguished under shops and paving-stones but the record 
is interesting. 
The enquirer who seeks to learn from Mr. Brace’s own collections the 
actual basis for some doubtful reports in his list and the significance 
of some names which because of nomenclatorial or other changes, 
are no longer clear, will meet with some disappointment. In Mr. 
Brace's day, the usefulness of an herbarium as a record of distribution 
had not been perceived: its sole function was to preserve representa- 
tive examples of different species. Other information could be rele- 
gated to a note-book. Mr. Brace proceeded strictly on this theory. 
Of most species he has kept only one specimen; three is the maximum. 
If he had a good specimen of, say, the dandelion from Europe, he did 
not think it necessary to preserve a Litchfield specimen also, though 
he would sometimes write “found here” on a foreign sheet. And he 
did not, as a rule, record date and place of collection. The result is 
that, of the 453 species recorded in his list, just thirty are represented 
in the herbarium by specimens definitely marked as from Litchfield. 
It is, however, possible by various processes of higher criticism, to 
make out what specimens are probably from Litchfield and to deter- 
mine with some degree of certainty, the identity of the plants Mr. 
Brace really had, in cases where the list leaves us in doubt. In 
addition to the thirty marked as from Litchfield, fifty-four bear 
statements of habitat, often differently phrased from those in the list, 
but usually essentially the same, which would indicate that these 
plants had come under Mr. Brace's eye. In two cases,— Scirpus 
validus and Eriophorum callitrix — this conjecture is borne out by the 
presence in the Torrey herbarium at New York of duly labelled Litch- 
field specimens; and in one— a rather marked form of Scirpus 
occidentalis — by the collection, during the past summer, of identical 
material at the locality — Dog Pond, Goshen — given in the list. 
Also, though Mr. Brace was careless as to his own specimens, he usu- 
ally provided some inscription, such as “ Middle States," “from Prof. 
Dewey" or the like, on those he received from others. Finally, he 
numbered, not so much his specimens as his species — all plants of the 
same species, if there were more than one, receiving the same number. 
This numbering evidently began with the spring collecting of some 
