BOTANY AT ST. LOUIS 493 



ton. Meriwether lost his father early in life, and one of his uncles 

 acted as his guardian. At the age of thirteen he was sent to the Latin 

 school, where he remained until he was eighteen, when he returned 

 home to help run the farm. At the age of twenty he entered as a vol- 

 unteer a body of militia which was called out by General Washington 

 to quell troubles in the western states, and from the militia he entered 

 the regular service as a lieutenant. When twentv-three vears old he 

 was promoted to a captaincy and made paymaster of his regiment. 

 He was personally well known to Thomas Jefferson, and when the 

 latter proposed that two persons should be sent up the Missouri River, 

 across the Rockies and down the Columbia to the Pacific Ocean, he 

 eagerly offered to go. A few years later Jefferson, remembering the 

 eagerness of Captain Lewis to make the trip, made him leader of the 

 expedition, which successfully carried out the plans, and is now known 

 as the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Captain Clark was made the leader 

 in the absence of Lewis. The expedition started in 1803 and returned 

 in 1806. Congress gave both leaders grants of land, and Lewis was 

 made governor of the territory of Louisiana, while Clark was made a 

 general of militia and agent for Indian affairs. Upon assuming his 

 duties as governor, Lewis found many factions and parties, but his 

 even-handed justice to all soon established respect for himself, and 

 eventually removed animosities. While on a trip to Washington he 

 suffered a temporary attack of insanity, and committed suicide on Oc- 

 tober 11, 1809. 



Pursh has named a genus of the Portulacacea\ Leivisia, in his honor. 



During the early part of the nineteenth century it was much the 

 fashion for botanists to collect living plants and cultivate them in 

 gardens, these gardens sometimes being quite extensive. Sometimes 

 they were but temporary resting places for the plants until they could be 

 sent to European countries as novelties to be introduced there because 

 of some desirable quality. Andre Michaux had such gardens into 

 which he gathered his plants, and when opportunity offered sent them 

 to France. Many of our early botanists had their own gardens in which 

 they cultivated all of the different plants they could find, and thus be- 

 came acquainted with every detail concerning them. The Bartram and 

 Marshall gardens near Philadelphia were good examples of these early 

 collections of living plants. 



Among many persons sent from Europe to this country for the pur- 

 pose of collecting new and rare plants was one John Bradbury, 4 who 

 was commissioned to act as the agent of the Liverpool Botanical So- 



4 Bradbury, John, " Travels in the Interior of America in the Years 1809, 

 1810 and 1811," 1-346, 1819, 2d edition. 



Short, C. W., Transylvania Jour, of Med., etc., 34: 12-13, 1836. 



Britten, Jas., and Boulger, G. S., " Biographical Index of British and 

 Irish Botanists," 21, 1893. 



