1898.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. ' 13 



tion finally started. Among his other instructions from Jefferson, 

 they were to note the food plants of the Indians and the " dates at 

 which particular plants put forth flowers and leaves." If only they 

 had heen authorized to make complete botanical collections, and a 

 competent collector made part of the expedition, how great a boon 

 would it not have been to botanical science ! From the few they 

 did collect, Pursh in his " Flora America? Septentrionalis," pub- 

 lished in London in 1814, refers to 119, many of which he de- 

 scribed as wholly new. 



What became of the complete collection has never been defi- 

 nitely ascertained up to this time. Pursh says in his preface to the 

 work cited, that after his return from his expedition to the Great 

 Lakes in 1806, Captain Lewis gave him the collection in order to 

 describe and figure those he thought to be new. " The collection 

 was made during the rapid return from the Pacific. A much more 

 extensive one made on their slow ascent toward the Rocky Mount- 

 ains and the chains of the northern Andes, had unfortunately been 

 lost, by being deposited among other things at the foot of these 

 mountains. The loss of this fine collection is the more to be regret- 

 ted, when I consider that the small collection communicated tome, 

 consisting of about 150 specimens, contained but about a dozen 

 plants well known to be natives of North America." It was under- 

 stood that Pursh took these plants to England, and that they were 

 left by him to Mr. A. B. Lambert, Vice-President of the Linnsean 

 Society, under whose roof, and by whose aid, Pursh 's great work was 

 completed. Lambert's herbarium was finally distributed, and, in 

 some way not known to the writer, a number of Lewis' plants, 

 forming Pursh's types, and marked "from Lambert's Herbarium" 

 became part of the Herbarium of the Academy of Natural Sciences 

 of Philadelphia. 



Two years ago Professor C. S. Sargent suggested to the writer 

 the possibility of some of the material being yet in the custody of 

 the American Philosophical Society. The special attention to nat- 

 ural history of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 

 — the leading members of this and the American Philosophical 

 Society being the same — has not warranted the formation of natural 

 history collections by the latter. After long and diligent search, 

 packages of plants were found which could only be these, as the 

 localities on the label slips were about the same as those given in 

 Pursh's work. But the hand-writing was that of a German, and 



