PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 79 



and in 174S was writing a work upon the natural and medical 

 history of North America.* He died at an advanced age, about 

 1773. His name is perpetuated in that of our beautiful little 

 parti idgeberry, Mitchetta repens. ~ Mitchell and Clayton to- 

 gether," says Tuckerman, "gave to the botany of Virginia a 

 distinguished lustre." 



Dr. John Tennent, of Port Royal, Va., seems to have been a 

 man of botanical tastes. He it was who brought into view the 

 virtues of the Seneca snake root, publishing at Williamsburgh, in 

 1736, an essay on pleurisy, in which he treats of the Seneca as an 

 efficient remedy in the cure of this disease. f He also wrote other 

 botanical treatises.! Dr. Greham, of Dumfries, Va., was a man 

 of similar tastes, and it is said by Mr. Jefferson that we are in- 

 debted to him for the introduction into America of the tomato. 



David Krieg, F. R. S., a German botanist, collected insects for 

 Petiver in Maryland, and gathered also hundreds of species of 

 plants. He seems to have returned to England very early in the 

 century, for his name appears in the Philosophical Transactions 

 in 1 701 . 



Col. William Byrd, of " Westover," Va., [b. 1674, d. 1744], 

 was a man of European education, the owner of a magnificent 

 library, in which Stith wrote his history of Virginia, founder of the 

 city of Richmond, colonial agent in London, and President of the 

 King's council. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, to which 

 he communicated a paper " concerning a negro boy dappled with 

 white spots, "§ and was a correspondent of Collinson, Bartram, 

 and other naturalists. His " History of the Dividing Line" and 

 his "Journey to the Land of Eden," in 1733, contain many inter- 



* Smith : Correspondence of Linnceus, ii, pp. 442-451. 



t Thacher : Medical Biography, i, p. 73. 



% Mitchell writing to Linnaeus, in 1748, remarks : " I can now only send 

 you * * * some dissertations of Mr. Tennant upon the Polygala, two 

 of which only have come out among his latest publications. His former 

 ones, of inferior merit, are not now to be had." 



§ Phil. Trans., 1697. 



