4o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tations to labor for distinction wliich exist now were wanting in 

 his day ; and tlius lie was led, almost unconsciously, to a very high 

 station among American botanists. Concerning this, he remarked 

 to Dr. Wood : " Nothing surprised me more than to be called a 

 botanist at first. Although I had accomplished the survey of the 

 phenogamous plants of the State, I still felt that I was compara- 

 tively not a botanist." Several years later than this — about 1855 — 

 he began to give special attention to the edible mushrooms. He 

 finally became a kind of missionary and propagandist of mush- 

 room-eating. In the catalogue of the plants of North Carolina 

 he had indicated one hundred and eleven species of edible fungi 

 known to inhabit the State ; and he had no doubt that there 

 were forty or fifty more, in the less explored Alpine regions. He 

 was accustomed to distribute basketfuls of the choicest speci- 

 mens among his friends, "until the divine art of mycophagy 

 reached a good degree of cultivation, and many of them learned 

 to distinguish for themselves the edible ones. Some members 

 of his family became especially expert in foraging for the table 

 among the mushrooms"; and his son used the knowledge thus 

 acquired in preparing the colored illustrations for the contem- 

 plated work on " Edible Fungi." This book was projected during 

 the civil war, when the food-question was a vital one in Southern 

 households, and was intended to make popular the use of mush- 

 rooms. In it. Dr. Wood affirms, the author succeeded in divesting 

 himself of every technicality, and indeed in describing minutely 

 about forty of the one hundred and eleven species in language easy 

 to be understood, and in an enticing manner. Illustrations and 

 comparisons were occasionally drawn from foreign authors. The 

 work failed to find a publisher. 



Dr. Curtis's studies of plants embraced every feature and rela- 

 tion that he was able to bring under observation. " Just to name 

 a flower and preserve it carefully in his herbarium," says Dr. 

 Wood, " was to him but the beginning of his work. His earliest 

 records show that he studied the relation of plant-life to geologic 

 and climatic surroundings. The study of botanical geography 

 was begun and continued during his whole career as a botanist, 

 extending over thirty-eight years. The account he has given us 

 in his ' Woody Plants ' is to-day the best guide to the natural 

 climatological divisions of the State which has ever been given. 

 His studies were also directed to the numerous economic ques- 

 tions which met him in his intimate acquaintance with the treas- 

 ures of the field and forest. It was this feature of his labors 

 alone which brought him an audience in his adopted State, and 

 with this object in view he brought together the material which 

 he published as a part of the Geological and Natural History Sur- 

 vey, known best by the condensed title given to it by Prof. Em- 



