BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 36| 



menced a correspondence with Linnceus ; and to both he sent 

 manuscript descriptions of new plants and animals, with many 

 excellent critical observations. None of his specimens ad- 

 dressed to the latter reached their destination, the ships by 

 which they were sent having been intercepted by French 

 cruisers; and Linnaeus complained that he was often unable 

 to make out many of Dr Garden's genera for want of t!ie 

 plants themselves. Ellis was sometimes more fortunate; but 

 as he seems usually to have contented himself with the trans- 

 mission of descriptions alone, we find no authentic specimens 

 from Garden in the Linnaean herbarium. 



We have now probably mentioned all the North American 

 correspondents 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 kw living plants which his friend Lawson had collected 

 in Carolina, can scarcely be reckoned among the number.* 



The Linnaean 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 attached to fine and strong paper, after the 

 method now common in England. In North American bo- 

 tany, the chief contributors are Menzies, for the plants of 

 California and the North-West Coast; and Muhlenberg, 

 Bigelovv, 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 



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

 " You would scarcely believe how many of the vegetable productions of 

 Virginia 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 moun- 

 tains 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 Al- 

 pine plants are found there as in Europe." Who can this American stu- 

 dent have been ? Kuhn did not visit Linnaeus until more than fifteen years 

 after the date of this letter. 



Vol. in.— No. 23. 3 A 



