Oct. 19, 1888.] J- [Sargent. 



PROCEE DINGS 



OP THE 



AMERICA:^ PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. 



HELD AT rHILADELPHIA, FOR PROBTIM USEFUL KNOWLEDGE. 



Vol. XXVL January to July, 1889. No. 129. 



Portions of the Journal of Andre Michaux, Botanut, written during his 

 Travels in the United States and Canada, 17S5to 1796. With an Introduc- 

 tion and Explanatory Notes, by C. S. Sargent. 



{Read before the American Philosophical Society, October 19, ISSS ) 



Preface. 



The younger Michaux, in the year 1824, presented to the American 

 Philosophical Society the manuscript diary liept by his father during hia 

 travels in America. The first parts had been unfortunately lost in the 

 wreck of the vessel in which Michaux returned to France from America, 

 and no record is preserved of his travels in tliis country from the time of 

 his arrival in Now York in September, 1785, until his first visit to South 

 Carolina in 1787. 



Reference is made to this Journal by Deleuze in his biographical memoir 

 of Michaux, printed in the fourth volume of the Annales du Museum in 

 1804, and, doubtless, he had access to its pages, as without them he could 

 scarcely have followed the footsteps of the French botanist through the 

 wilds of the American continent. The first notice of the Journal which ap- 

 peared in this country is found in a paper by Prof. Asa Gray, entitled 

 Notes of a Botanical Excursion to the Mountains of North Carolina, pub- 

 lished in the American Journal of Science, in 1841, in which some account of 

 Michaux's American travels and discoveries, with short extracts from his 

 Journal, appear. A more detailed account of those parts of this document 

 which relate to Canada, with notes upon Michaux's Canadian plants, was 

 published in 1863 by the Abbe Ovide Brunei under the title of Notice sur 

 les Plantes de Michaux et sur son Voyage au Canada et a la Baie Hudson. 

 These brief extracts directed the attention of botanists to this record of the 

 travels of one of the most interesting and picturesque figures in the annals 

 of botanical discovery in America ; and for many years the feeling has 

 existed among them that the Journal which furnishes an important> chap- 

 ter in the history of the development of American botany should be pub- 

 lished. The American Philosophical Society having shared in these views, 



PROG. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XXVI. 139. A. PRINTED FEB. 11, 1889, 



