SKETCH OF THOMAS NUTTALL. 691 



For the next eight years he remained in Philadelphia, during 

 the winter months studying the collections made by him in sum- 

 mer excursions to various parts of the country east of the Missis- 

 sippi, from the Great Lakes to Florida. Being absorbed in his 

 studies and naturally reserved, Nuttall's social intercourse was 

 limited. The families of the botanists and horticulturists of the 

 time in Philadelphia Prof. Barton, Zaccheus Collins, Reuben 

 Haines, McMahon, from whom he named his genus Malionia, 

 William Bartram, and Colonel Carr were almost his only ac- 

 quaintances. To these he made visits, often of several days, from 

 time to time. In Colonel Carr's house a room was expressly re- 

 served for him. During this period he prepared also the descrip- 

 tion for his Genera of the North American Plants. Upon this 

 work, which appeared in 1818, the reputation of Mr. Nuttall as a 

 botanist principally rests. Prof. Torrey, in the preface to his 

 Flora, declared that it had "contributed more than any other 

 work to the advance of the accurate knowledge of the plants of 

 this country." Nuttall turned his early trade to account by set- 

 ting the type for the greater part of his book. 



In 1817 Mr. Nuttall, already a Fellow of the Linnsean Society 

 of London, was elected a member of the American Philosophical 

 Society at the same meeting with Say and Schweinitz, and a cor- 

 responding member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Phila- 

 delphia. He began to publish essays in the journal of the Acad- 

 emy, among the earliest being a description of Collinsia, a new 

 genus of plants, named in honor of his friend and patron Z. Collins. 



Nuttall had long desired to visit the Arkansas country, and soon 

 after his American Plants was published Messrs. Correa de Serra, 

 Z. Collins, William Maclure, and John Vaughan procured him 

 the means of performing this long journey. Starting from Phila- 

 delphia on October 2, 1818, he reached the mouth of the Arkansas 

 River about the middle of January and Fort Bellepoint on April 

 21:th. Thence he made expeditions in several directions, return- 

 ing with abundant collections. He was on one of these trips in 

 the middle of August, when, exhausted by long and difficult 

 marches, made under the rays of a burning sun and in constant 

 dread of the Indians, having suffered much from thirst, insuffi- 

 cient food, and exposure to the night dews, he was seized with a 

 violent fever among the Osage tribe. The Indians robbed Jiim 

 of his effects and even threatened his life, but he finally reached 

 the garrison at Bellepoint, where he remained sick until the mid- 

 dle of October. He made one more trip and then set out for 

 home, reaching New Orleans February 18, 1820. He had then in 

 sixteen months made a journey of more than five thousand miles, 

 mainly over a country never visited before by scientific explorers, 

 and still in the undisputed possession of the Indians. 



