lO JOURNAL OF THE 



Curtis entered upon the 8tudy of botany, the t-cience had already 

 enlisted the men who were to give it the permanent impress of their 

 rare ability. I propose now to pass in review the botanical career 

 of the Rev. Dr. Curtis, rather than attempt a general biography. 



Moses Ashley Curtis was born in Stockbridge, Berkshire county, 

 Mass., May 11th, 1808. His mother was the daughter of Gen. Moses 

 Ashley. He graduated at Williams College, September, 1827. 



Mr. Curtis came to Wilmington in October, 1830, as a tutor in the 

 family of Governor Dudley. He devoted himself in all of his leisure 

 hours to the study of the flora of that region. Especially on Satur- 

 days he made excursions among the sand hills and savannahs near 

 Wilmington. At that time (1831) Wilmington was a village of about 

 4,000 inhabitants, and the field for botanizing existed where now are 

 busy streets. Close up to the village reached the pine forests abound- 

 ing with a flora rich and novel to the enthusiastic young botanist, 

 while the savannahs, with their strange and interesting Sarracenia 

 and Pixidanthera, and Droseras, and the thousands of gaudy heads 

 of Liatris, and the brilliant yellows of Coreopsis and Solidago, 

 charmed the eye and filled his portfolios, 



A flora so vast as that of America was difficult for any one man 

 to compass in the course of a lifetime, and so the earlier botanists 

 had conceived the advantage of florulas, to De prepared each for 

 his local section. Dr. Samuel L. Mitchell led off in 1807 in this 

 work i>y publishing a catalogue of the plants growing around his 

 country seat in New York, and he was followed by Maj. John le 

 Conte in a florula for the island of New York in 1811, and in 1814 

 Dr. Jacob Bigelow published a model specimen of a local flora en- 

 titled Florula Bostoniensin. Subsequently the science uf botany 

 was enriched by the contributions of Dr. J. A. Brereton, for Wash- 

 ington, D. C. ; and in 1830 by Prof, C. W. Short, for Lexington, Ky. 



It was the result of his botanical studies that Mr. Curtis gave to 

 the public under the title of '^ Enumeration of Plants Growing 

 Spontaneously Around Wilmington, North Carolina,'''' with remarks 

 on some new obscure species." This first appeared in the Boston 

 Journal of Natural History, September 3d, 1834, (No. 2, vol. 1,) the 

 first edition of which was nearly all burnt, but it was subsequently 

 reprinted " with many additions and emendations." Dr. Gray says 

 it was one of the first works of the kind in this country in which the 

 names are accented. 



His quick eye and assiduous application may be judged by the 

 fact that* in little more than two seasons, at intervals from other 



* Enumeration of Plants, &c., M. A. Curtis, p. 83. Reprint Boston Journal 

 Natural History, Vol. i, No. 2, 1834. 



