124 SHORT ON WESTERN BOTANY. 



adjacent to Alexandria and New Orleans. Whilst the ex- 

 treme limits of our frontier borders have been occasionally 

 more or less attentively examined and explored by Drs 

 Leavenworth and Pitcher, Surgeons in the U. S. army, as 

 they have happened to be stationed at the different outposts. 

 This list of labourers in the wide-spread field of Western 

 Botany is far we trust from being complete — at all events, 

 we hope it may be rapidly augmented by the addition of 

 zealous devotees in ail quarters, until the vegetable riches of 

 this vast territory are fully ascertained ! 



In connexion with these desultory remarks on the progress 

 of botany in Western America, it may not be irrelevant to 

 observe, that some two or three years ago, at the instance 

 of the Lexington Medical Society, we read before it a paper 

 on the subject of collecting and preserving plants for herba- 

 ria, which, having been printed and extensively circulated, 

 has received the commendation of those best qualified to 

 judge of the matter; and we trust the directions therein 

 given, will be found useful in diffusing a general knowledge 

 of that important point in practical botan}-- — the formation 

 of perfect specimens. 



In conclusion, we regret not to have been able to give, m 

 the proper place, some account of the discoveries of Lfv 

 Scouler and M. Chamisso, on the Western coast of the Con- 

 tinent. The former of these gentlemen accompanied one oi 

 the British expeditions of discovery; and the latter was Natu- 

 ralist to a Russian scientific voyage under Kotzebue.— • 

 Both have contributed valuable materials towards a Flora oi 

 the Pacific coast, but we are not sufficiently acquainted wit" 

 the particulars of them to enter into any detail. The same 

 may be said of two other botanists of our own country, i'' 

 L. C. Beck, of New York, and Mr Schweinitz of Pennsyl- 

 vania, both of whom have performed tours through Ohio, 

 Illinois, and a part of Missouri, of which some notice has 

 been published by the former in Silliman's Journal. 



Lexington, KENTrrcKY, Auffusi, 1836. 



