SHORT ON WESTERN BOTANY. 119 



amiable, libera], communicative and unpretending man, and 

 a profound botanist — Science will long and deeply deplore 

 his untimely end ! 



Last in our notice of foreign labourers in the field of 

 Western Botany, we must mention Dr Joseph Frank of 

 Germany, who after having made extensive explorations and 

 collections in his own country and Switzerland, came over 

 to America with the same object in view. He spent a year 

 or two in Cincinnati, and other parts of Ohio; when he was 

 commissioned by the Grand Duke of Baden to travel in the 

 Southern and Western States. On this service he ventured 

 to New Orleans early in the fall of 1835, where he speedily 

 fell a victim to yellow fever. What was the extent of his 

 collections in this country, or what disposition has been 

 made of them, we are uninformed. 



Whilst these researches were in progress towards the eluci- 

 dation of the botany of the West, by travellers from abroad, and 

 investigators from other portions of the Union, a few of our 

 own citizenswere not entirely inattentive to, or unobservant of 

 it. Among these, Dr Daniel Drake was foremost. In A Natural 

 and Statistical Vieiv or Picture of Cincinnati and the Miami 

 country, which he published in 1815, a very copious cata- 

 logue is given of the forest trees found in that quarter ; and 

 another of such herbaceous plants as are useful in Medicine 

 or the Arts ; to these is appended a Floral Calendar, or 

 Journal of the progress of vegetation in and about Cincinnati. 

 During his subsequent engagements as Professor of Materia 

 Medica in Transylvania University, he devoted a due share 

 of attention to medical botany, and both in his lectures 

 and writings he has ever strenuously advocated the cause of 

 botany, as an important collateral branch of the science of 

 niedicine. 



In 1819, a work of somewhat a similar character to that 

 just mentioned, was published by Dr M'Murtrie of Louis- 

 ville, in which, among a variety of other matter, is given a 

 catalogue of the plants growing in the neighbourhood of 

 that city. We cannot, however, vouch for the accuracy of 



