EUROPEAN HERBARIA. 7 
The former collected seeds and living plants for Peter Col- 
linson during more than twenty years, and even at that early 
day extended his laborious researches from the frontiers of 
Canada to southern Florida and the Mississippi. All his 
collections were sent to his patron Collinson,! until the death 
1 Mr. Collinson kept up a correspondence with all the lovers of plants 
in this country, among whom were Governor Colden, Bartram, Mitchell, 
Clayton, and Dr. Garden, by whose means he procured the introduction 
of great numbers of North American plants into the English gardens. 
“Your system,” he writes Linnzus, “I can tell you, obtains much in 
America. Mr. Clayton and Dr. Colden at Albany, on Hudson’s River, in 
New York, are complete professors, as is Dr. Mitchell at Urbana, on 
Rappahannock River in Virginia. It is he that has made many and great 
discoveries in the vegetable world.’”? “I am glad you have the corre- 
spondence of Dr. Colden and Mr. Bartram. They are both very inde- 
fatigable, ingenious men. Your system is much admired in North Amer- 
ica.” Again, “I have but lately heard from Mr. Colden. He is well, 
but what is marvellous, his daughter is perhaps the first lady that has so 
perfectly studied your system. She deserves to be celebrated.’’ “In 
the second volume of ‘ Edinburg Essays’ is published a Latin botanic dis- 
sertation by Miss Colden ; perhaps the only lady that makes a profession 
of the Linnzan system, of which you may be proud.’’ From all this, bot- 
any appears to have flourished in the North American colonies. But Dr. 
Garden about this time writes thus to his friend Ellis: ‘‘ Ever since I 
have been in Carolina, I have never been able to set my eye upon one 
who had barely a regard for botany. Indeed, I have often wondered 
how there should be one place abounding with so many marks of the di- 
vine wisdom and power, and not one rational eye to contemplate them ; 
or that there should be a country abounding with almost every sort of 
plant, and almost every species of the animal kind, and yet that it 
should not have pleased God to raise up one botanist. Strange, indeed, 
that the creature should be so rare!’’ But to return to Collinson, the 
most amusing portion of whose correspondence consists of his letters to 
Linnzus shortly after the publication of the “Species Plantarum,”’ in 
which (with all kindness and sincerity) he reproves the great Swedish 
naturalist for his innovations, employing the same arguments which a 
strenuous Linnean might be supposed to advance against a botanist of 
these latter days. “I have had the pleasure,’’ Collinson writes, ‘of 
reading your ‘Species Plantarum,’ a very useful and laborious work. 
But, my dear friend, we that admire you are much concerned that you 
should perplex the delightful science of botany with changing names thaé 
have been well received, and adding new names quite unknown to us 
Thus, botany, which was a pleasant study and attainable by most men, is 
now become, by alterations and new names, the study of a man’s life, and 
