696 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



mucli might tlien be accomplished. If, then, one of our younger 

 associates Dr. Barton, for instance, whose specialty it is would 

 combine the different floras into one, how pleasant it would be for 

 the botanical world ! I have written to nearly all the persons 

 named above, and hope to receive their concurrence. Let me 

 know your views about it." Dr. Cutler gave the scheme his unre- 

 served aj^proval. 



This plan was not carried out. Instead of it, Andr^ Michaux 

 worked the combined collections of his eleven years' travels in 

 the United States, through the French botanist Richard, into a 

 Flora of North America, and it appeared in Paris in 1803, one year 

 after the author's death in Madagascar. 



The publication of this flora did not change Muhlenberg's 

 view of the necessity of comparative work in co-operation, and in 

 order to bring it a step nearer he decided in 1809 to write a cata- 

 logue of the then known native and naturalized plants of North 

 America {Catalogus Plantarum AmericcB Septentrionalis, hue 

 usque cognitarum hidigenarum et cicui'um), the printing of which 

 was finished after nearly nine months of work, at the end of July, 

 1813. While Michaux had described about fifteen hundred flow- 

 ering plants and ferns, Muhlenberg was able ten years later to 

 exhibit more, than double the number of species, and besides these 

 to add, from specimens mostly collected in Pennsylvania, 175 

 mosses, 39 liverworts, o2 algae, 176 lichens, and 305 fungi, in all 

 727 species. The Compositm comprised in Michaux 193 species, in 

 Muhlenberg 410. 



Muhlenberg conscientiously named not only the books which 

 he had used in the determination of his collected plants, but also 

 the twenty-eight correspondents in different parts of the United 

 States who had assisted him in his researches by sending plants 

 or seeds. The work gives, besides the botanical and English 

 names, only the numbers of the several parts of the flower, the 

 color of the corolla, the character of tlie fruit, the locality, and 

 the time of flowering, all as briefly as possible. 



At the same time a complete description of the plants growing 

 around Lancaster had been ready to print for years ; likewise a 

 complete description of all the other North American plants which 

 Muhlenberg had himself seen and arranged in his herbarium. 

 These descriptions were consequently based entirely on his own 

 knowledge, and had, therefore, especial value. Unfortunately, 

 they have not been published. 



A part of one of these works, comprising the grasses, was 

 printed in 1817, two years after the author's death, under the 

 title Descriptio uberior Graminum (Fuller Description of Grasses). 

 The manuscript of it was presented by Zaccheus Collins, a friend 

 of Muhlenberg, to the American Philosophical Society in 1831. 



