362 BOTANICAl, INFORMATION. 



Wallich, presented some years since by the East Indian 

 Company. 



Tlie collections preserved at the British Museum, are 

 scarcely inferior in importance to the Linnsean herbarium it- 

 self, in aiding the determination of the species of Linnaeus 

 and other early authors. Here we meet with the authentic 

 herbarium of the Hortus Cliffortianus, one of the earliest 

 works of Linnaeus, which comprises some plants that are 

 not to be found in his own proper herbarium. Here also is 

 the herbarium of Pluk^net, which consists of a gi'eat number 

 of small specimens, crowded, without apparent order, upon 

 the pages of a dozen large folio volumes. With due atten- 

 tion, the originals of many figures in the Almagestum and 

 Amaltheum Botanicum, Sfc, may be recognised, 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 Ja- 

 maica, &fc., and the Catalogue of the Plants of Jamaica, were 

 united by Linnceus, in almost every instance incorrectly, with 

 species peculiar to the United States and Canada. But still 

 more important is the herbarium of Clayton, from whose 

 notes and specimens Gronovius edited the Flora Virginica* 

 Many Linnaean species are founded on the plants here de- 

 scribed, for which this herbarium is alone authentic; for Lin- 

 naeus, as we have already remarked, possessed very few t)f 

 Clayton's plants. Tiie collection is nearly complete; but the 

 specimens were not well prepared, and are therefore not al- 

 ways in perfect preservation. A collection of Catesby's 

 plants exists also in the British Museum ; but probably the 

 larger portion remains at Oxford. There is besides, among 

 the separate collections, a small but very interesting parcel 

 selected by the elder Bartram, from his collections made in 

 Georgia and Florida almost a century ago, and presented to 



* Flora Virrjinica, exJiibens plantas quas J. Clayton in Virginia collegit. 

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

 ibe Species Plantarum of LinnseTis ; the second, again, quotes the specific 

 phrases of Linn»us. 



