138 Notices of European Herbaria, 



sometimes more fortunate ; but as he seems usually to have con- 

 tented himself with the transmission of descriptions alone, we find 

 no authentic specimens from Garden in the Linnsean herbarium. 



We have now probably mentioned all the North American cor- 

 respondents of Linnaeus ; for Dr. Kuhn, who appears only to have 

 brought him living specimens of the plant which bears his name, and 

 Catesby, who shortly before his death sent a few living plants which 

 his friend Lawson had collected in Carolina, can scarcely be reckoned 

 among the number*. 



The Linnsean Society also possesses the proper herbarium of its 

 founder and first president. Sir James E. Smith, which is a beautiful 

 collection, and in excellent preservation. The specimens are at- 

 tached to fine and strong paper, after the method now common in 

 England. In North American botanj'^, the chief contributors are 

 Menzies, for the plants of California and the north-west coast ; 

 and Muhlenberg, Bigelow, Torrey and Boott, for those of the United 

 States. Here also we find the cryptogamic collections of Acharius, 

 containing the authentic specimens described in his works on the 

 Lichens, and the magnificent East Indian herbarium of Wallich, pre- 

 sented some years since by the East India Company. 



The collections preserved at the British Museum are scarcely in- 

 ferior in importance to the Linnsean herbarium itself, in aiding the 

 determination of the species of Linnseus and other early authors. 

 Here we meet with the authentic herbarium of the ' Hortus Cliffor- 

 tianus,' one of the earliest works of Linnseus, which comprises some 

 plants that are not to be found in his own proper herbarium. Here 

 also is the herbarium of Plukenet, which consists of a great number 

 of small specimens crowded, without apparent order, upon the pages 

 of a dozen large folio volumes. With due attention, the originals of 

 many figures in the ' Almagestum' and * Amaltheum Botanicum,' &c., 

 may be recognized, and many Linnsean species thereby authenticated. 

 The herbarium of Sloane, also, is not without interest to the North 

 American botanist, since many plants described in the ' Voyage to 

 Jamaica,' &c., and the * Catalogue of the Plants of Jamaica,' were 

 united by Linnaeus, in almost every instance incorrectly, with spe- 

 cies peculiar to the United States and Canada. But still more im- 

 portant is the herbarium of Clayton, from whose notes and speci- 

 mens Gronovius edited the * Flora Virginicaf/ Many Linnseanspe- 



• In a letter to Haller, dated Leyden, Jan. 23, 1738, Linnseus writes: 

 ** You would scarcely believe how many of the vegetable productions of Vir- 

 ginia are the same as our European ones. There are Alps in the country 

 of New York, for the snow remains all summer long on the mountains there. 

 I am now giving instructions to a medical student here, who is a native of 

 that country, and will return thither in the course of a year, that he may 

 visit those mountains, and let me know whether the same alpine plants are 

 found there as in Europe." Who can this American student have been ? 

 Kuhn did not visit Linnaeus until more than fifteen years after the date of 

 this letter. 



f * Flora Virginica, exhibens plantas quas J. Clayton in Virginia collegit,' 

 Lugd. Bat. 8vo, 1743. — Ed. 2. 4to, 1762. The first edition is cited in the 

 ' Species Plantarum' of Linnaeus ; the second, again, quotes the specific 

 phrases of Linnseus. 



