218 BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 



quaintance of the gifted Prof. W. P. C. Barton, from whom he 

 obtained, as he said, " the rudiments of a botanical taste which 

 adhered to me for many years." This Professor Barton published 

 several works on American botany, the most pretentious of 

 which was the uncompleted " Flora of North America," begun 

 in 1821. The first manifestations of a taste for botany had 

 been experienced by young Bigelow long before this time, how- 

 ever. He often told his friends that from his earliest years he 

 watched every plant and wondered over the variety of vegetable 

 productions. He once laughingly said to a friend that his first les- 

 son in botany was from the " most learned inhabitant of Sudbury " 

 to whom he carried a Star of Bethlehem to ask its name. The 

 " learned inhabitant " replied, " Why, that's grass." 



Dr. Bigelow gained little pecuniary benefit from his "tin 

 sign," as he used to call it, for the first year after his graduation. 

 In 1811, he became associated with Dr. James Jackson, and for 

 nearly sixty years ranked next to his venerable senior, the most 

 popular practitioner of the city. In 1812 he began, with Profes- 

 sor W. D. Peck, of the University, a course of lectures on bot- 

 any. These lectures at once became very popular, especially 

 those delivered by Dr. Bigelow, who possessed a most happy 

 manner of illustration quite unknown to his colleague. " Find- 

 ing that a considerable taste had sprung up among my pupils for 

 the study of plants," he says, " I began to collect materials for a 

 description of the native plants of Boston and its vicinity, which 

 I published in 1814 under the name of 'Florula Bostoniensis.' ' 

 This was a bright 12mo. of 268 pages, containing 294 genera. 

 Most of the plants described grew within five or ten miles of 

 Boston, and were collected during the two preceding seasons. It 

 was arranged entirely upon the artificial system. To each plant 

 was added a concise and popular description. The difficult gen- 

 era were not well represented in this first edition, for the author 

 had not had sufficient time for studying them closely. Nor were 

 the limits of species as closely drawn then as now. In a subse- 

 quent edition of the flora he remarks, under Aster and Solidago, 

 that " there are a vast variety of hybrids and subspecies which 

 the labors of botanists have not yet been able to reduce under per- 

 manent characters, though names without number have been ap- 

 plied to fugitive varieties. In this work I have inserted only 

 the more distinct or leading species, from which a great part 

 of the others in this vicinity are probably descended.'' Florula 

 Bostoniensis may be said to be the first distinctive local flora 

 published in America. It passed through three editions, the sec- 



