184 MR, DRUMMOND’S COLLECTIONS. 
frequently to unwholesome dews at night. So rapid too 
is the evaporation, in consequence of the great heats, that 
were not the specimens placed in the papers immediately 
upon being gathered, they would have been quite destroyed. 
Mention is made of a very remarkable bank of shells in 
this letter. ‘* The rivers here,” he says, ‘seem to be entirely 
destitute of shells, either small or large; and it is re- 
markable that I have met with only one kind in the great 
Jake of Pontchartraine; and dead specimens of this form 
banks of several miles in extent, running into the interior 
of the country. Maddisonville is built upon one of these; but 
to what depth they reach, or at what period they were 
formed, I have no means of determining." 
Previous to his embarkation for Texas, Mr. Drummond 
made an excursion to Jacksonville, whence another box was 
sent early in the present year, 1833, and this, together with 
one again from the vicinity of New Orleans, which arrived in 
July last, complete the Louisiana collection, * amounting, 
Mr. Drummond reckons, in all (exclusive, however, of Cryp- 
togamia) to 1000 species. As the selecting and distribution 
of these has devolved entirely upon myself, I have found it 
impossible to put numbers to the whole, as I had intended; and 
the utility of the following list will thereby be somewhat 
diminished. But as the respective collections which con- 
tain the species, are always referred to, it will not be difficult, 
with the further assistance of Pursh, Elliott, or Nuttall’s works, 
for those even who were previously unacquainted with Amer- 
ican Botany, to determine them. The first portion of the 
New Orleans collection, is alone distributed with Numbers. 
The collections from around Philadelphia (here marked 
** Pennsylvania"), the Alleghanies, Wheeling, and Ohio, being 
* Two collections of extremely interesting plants have since been 
received from Texas, which being considerably different from those of the 
more Eastern States, will form the subject of a separate paper. ! 
ET Te Am NONI ARS UB A EnS SEET PIE E an RENDERE TORRE 
