1865.] 285 [Gross. 



journey which he undertook for tlie purpose, and which was per- 

 formed in the latter part of summer, Dr. Short was accompanied by 

 his brother and several intimate friends, on account of the interest 

 they took in the objects of the tour. He travelled in a light covered 

 wagon, purposely constructed for the accommodation of an extensive 

 collection, and he was constantly on the lookout for everything of 

 interest. He passed over a distance of nearly four hundred miles, 

 including the best portion of the State of Illinois, and returned, late 

 in the season, laden with botanical treasures. The emotions he ex- 

 perienced on beholding, for the first time, a large prairie, is thus 

 graphically described : "On reaching the centre of one of these im- 

 mense natural meadows, the view presented to the eye of a novice in 

 such scenery is one of the most pleasing sort. But beautiful, im- 

 posing, and grand as is this spectacle, I must own that, in a botanical 

 point of view, I was disappointed ! The flora of the prairies — the 

 theme of so much admiration to those who view them with an ordi- 

 nary eye — dpes not, when closely examined by the botanist, present 

 that deep interest and attraction which he has been led to expect. 

 The leading feature is rather the unbounded profusion with which a 

 few species occur in certain localities than the mixed variety of many 

 different species occurring everywhere." Certain plants seemed to 

 monopolize, if such an expression be allowable, certain districts, ex- 

 tending, perhaps, over thousands of acres, and exhibiting the appear- 

 ance of a vast flowering garden, of almost every shade of color, from 

 the purest white to the deepest yellow, red, or purple. What parti- 

 cularly struck him was the remarkable absence of ferns, and the as- 

 tonishing paucity of mosses, in these prairies. Of the former he did 

 not meet with a single specimen of any species of the extensive tribe 

 in the more open meadows, — a circumstance evidently due, as he 

 supposed, to the want of shade and moisture in which most of these 

 plants so much delight. 



The above catalogue comprises, so far as I know, all, or nearly all, 

 that Dr. Short ever wrote upon botany. His other writings consisted 

 mainly, if not wholly, of medical cases and college addresses. 



In 1830, he communicated to the Transylvania Journal of Medicine 

 the particulars of a case, then considered as very curious, of spontaneous 

 combustion of the human body. The subject was a female, of intem- 

 perate habits, upwards of sixty-five years of age. Without fully in- 

 dorsing the idea of the possibility of such an occurrence, he expressed 

 the opinion that it was an example of a more general destruction of 

 the human body by caloric than could easily be explained upon ordi- 

 nary principles, or the amount of combustible material present on the 



