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fession and high in the confidence of his fellow citizens, he fell a 
victim to the fatigues and exposure of an extensive practice. In 
the midst of a brilliant career, with prospects of increasing useful- 
ness and extended reputation, he died at the early age of 33.” 
In dedicating to this gentleman the genus, Macoridea, Elliott 
says, “I have named this genus in commemoration of the late Dr. 
James McBride, whose untimely death, medicine and natural his- 
tory and an admiring country equally deplore.” 
There are a namber of plants in our flora, both among 
phanerogams and cryptogams which have been named for Rev. 
Moses A. Curtis, of North Carolina, a most acute botanist and a 
gentleman whose character and ability reflect honor upon the 
State in which he lived. Curtis was born in Berkshire county, 
Massachusetts, in 1808, and at the age of 22 came to Wilming- 
ton, N. C., as a tutor in the family of Governor Dudley. He 
began at once to devote himself to the study of the flora of that 
region, which was especially rich and interesting. Close up to 
the village reached the pine forests, abounding in strange plants 
that charmed the eye and filled the portfolios of the enthusiastic 
young botanist. His quick eye and assiduity may be judged by 
the fact that in little more than two seasons during his brief hours 
of leisure he made a collection of over a thousand species, or 
rather more than half the number described in Elliott’s Botany. 
The result of these two years’ investigation appeared in 1834, in 
Curtis's “Enumeration of the Plants Growing Spontaneously 
around Wilmington, N. C.,” published in the Boston Journal of 
Natural H istory. This first contribution to botany by Dr. Curtis 
was more than a mere catalogue, and it attracted the favorable 
Notice of his teachers and correspondents. It was so thorough 
that after the lapse of half a century only about 50 species have 
been added to his list. Among some of the new plants which he 
found near Wilmington was the curious and very local Dionea 
muscipula, or Venus fly-trap. Week after week he would visit the 
savannas, and, lying at full length upon the ground, would watch 
the peculiarities of this plant, and the description which he gave 
of its habits in his first published work has been many times 
quoted during the last 50 years, showing that he possessed the 
gift of accurate and entertaining description to a marked degree. 
