T1IK JOUUNAI. OF BOTANY 



Walter iana, nova genera, a very beautiful evergreen shrub": two 

 specimens bearing the name in the hand supposed to be Eraser's are 

 in Walter's herbarium, to one of which Nuttall has attached the 

 specific name " Fraseri." 



Tlie fullest account of the author of the Flora is contained in an 

 article entitled "A Visit to the Crave of Thomas Walter" by W. (\ 

 Coker, published in the Journal of the Elisha Mitchell Scientific 

 Society, xxyi. pp. 31-42 (Chapel Hill, N. C, 1910). This contains 

 a picture of the grave — he was buried in his garden, now overgrown— 

 and a copy of the inscription on his tombstone, which runs thus: 



"In memory of Thomas Walter native of Hampshire in 

 England and many years a resident of this state. He died in the 

 beginning of the year 1788 [the exact date, we learn from Fraser, 

 was Jan. 18] aetatis cir. 48 ann. To a mind liberally endowed by 

 nature and refined by a liberal education he added a taste to the study 

 of Natural History and in the Department of Botany science is 

 much indebted to his labours. At his desire he was buried on this 

 spot once the garden in which were cultivated most of the plants of 

 his Flora Cakoliniana. From motives of filial affection his only 

 surviving children Ann and Marv have placed this memorial." 



We learn from Mr. Colter's paper that Walter "came to South 

 Carolina as a young man, acquired a plantation on the banks of the 

 S.mtee river, in St. Steven's [sic] parish, and made it his home for 

 the remainder of his life. His house was built within a few feet of 

 the southern edge of the wild swamp of the Santee river, and 

 adjoining it he marked out and planted with paternal care one of the 

 first botanical gardens of America, those of John Bartram and 

 Humphrey Marshall alone having preceded him." He was married 

 twice and had four children, whose subsequent career Mr. Coker 

 narrates. A notice quoted by Prof. Sargent in Garden and Forest, 

 x. 302, describes Walter as "an English gentleman whose devotion to 

 the cause of Science led him to the wilds of Carolina " : there seems, 

 however, little foundation for this — nothing is known of Walter's 

 early life, and on his title-page he styles himself "Agricola," 



Kef erence _ has been made to the grass to which Fraser in 1788 

 devoted a folio publication, and to which Walter gave the name 

 Cornucopiee perennans ; the trivial of this is retained by Tuckerman 

 under Agrostis and by Michaux under Trichodium. Mr. Hitchcock 

 in the paper already referred to says that " In 1789 .... [p. 872] 

 Fraser wrote an article in the ^Gentleman's Magazine entitled 

 ' Fraser's Carolina Grass,' in which he gives a good description 

 accompanied by a plate." The article, however, is not by Fraser, 

 hut by the editor (" Sylvanus Urban"), who embodies in it much of 

 the account in Fraser's Short History, with which Mr. Hitchcock 

 does not seem to have been acquainted. He apologizes for the 

 previous publication (p. 08o, t. ii. figs. 1-3) of a figure and descrip- 

 tion of a nondescript grass as that of Fraser, and gives a plate (t. i) 

 of the true plant with Smith's description — the former reduced and 

 the latter quoted from Fraser's work, to which, curiously enough, no 

 reference is made. The writer notes that the grass " had been sent 

 by Professor Kalm from Canada to Linnaeus, and a specimen has 



