l8 PEOCEEDINGS OF THE 



Garden had been an earnest student of the Flora of !N'orth 

 America, and his first communications with Linne (in the year 

 3 758) referred to botanical subjects onh% but from the year 1760, 

 that is two years after the appearance of the 10th edition of the 

 ' System?,' by Linne's special desire, he commenced to collect for 

 his illustrious frieud the Reptiles, Insects, and, particularly, the 

 Fishes of South Carolina *. Garden was not a merely mechanical 

 collector ; he closely examined the specimens before he sent them 

 off, determined the genus with the aid of the tenth edition, drew 

 np technical descriptions and collected all information which he 

 thought might be useful to Linne. Linne frequently made use of 

 these notes, even so far as to draw from them specific characters. 

 Thus, when he distinguished and named a Sargus argyrops and a 

 Sargus clirysops, he evidently relied upon Garden's notes, in wliich 

 one was described with a silvery, and the other with a golden iris 

 of the eye. On the other hand, Linne did not make the fullest 

 possible use of Garden's collection, as he took no notice of several 

 well-marked species to which Garden had specially directed his 

 attention. It is difficult to account for their omission from the 

 ' Systema,' but no doubt we should find a sufilcient explanation if 

 Linne's replies to Garden ever should come to light. 



In the letters published by Smith we find distinct evidence of 

 four consignments of fishes made by Garden in the years from 

 1760 to 1771, besides some smaller ones, of which oue or more 

 never reached their destination. I have endeavoured to allocate 

 our specimens to the several consignments, as it is of some interest, 

 or even importance, to discriminate between specimens which came 

 into Linne's possession before or after the completion of the twelfth 

 edition of the ' Systema.' In that edition Garden's specimens are 

 mentioned under no less than forty species, either as types or as 

 what may be called cotypes ; these, of course, are the really 

 important part of the collection ; and it is satisfactory to find 

 that of them all but three are still preserved. The missing are 

 Tetrodon la'vigatus, which may have been a spirit-specimen, and 

 Balistes Tiispidus and Argentina carolma, to which I shall refer 

 later on. 



The first of the four collections which Linne received from 

 Garden was sent to him in 1760. We do not know the extent of 

 this consignment ; no list, not even the correspondence referring to 

 it, seems to have been preserved. The only documentary evidence 

 of it is found in Garden's letter of 1761 (see Corr. Linn. i. p. 306), 



in which he says : " I have sent you the skins Mnth a slip 



of paper to each, bearing the numbers and vernacular names, as 

 last year." Thus the discrimination of the specimens belonging to 

 this consignment is quite conjectural, and is based chiefly on the 

 iact that Linne's treatment of these specimens was diff'erent from 

 that of later consignments. He unfortunately removed Garden's 

 original tickets, pasted the specimens on folio sheets of paper of 



* Corresp. Linn. i. p. 300. 



