57 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
Nuttall remained for two months collecting plants and sea shells upon 
the different islands. He then separated from his companion and 
sailed for California. He spent most of the spring and summer upon 
the Pacific coast and then returned to the Sandwich Islands, where he 
embarked upon the same vessel that Dana was serving his “Two 
Years Before the Mast,” to come home by way of Cape Horn. He 
arrived at Philadelphia in October, 1835, and settled down to study 
his treasures. For several years he worked thus and published two 
important memoirs. At Christmas, 1841, Nuttall went back to Eng- 
land, where he resided the last seventeen years of his life. This 
was not from choice, but because of the conditions under which an es- 
tate was left to him by his uncle, requiring him to live in England 
nine months of the year. He used his ample grounds for growing 
rare plants. Just previously to leaving the United States he wrote 
a supplement to Michaux’s “Sylva.” In the preface his wanderings 
were outlined. He returned to America but once, when he took the 
last three months of 1847 and the first three months of 1848. At 
this time he studied the plants brought by Gamble from the Rocky 
Mountains and Upper California, and published a paper upon them. 
His death occurred on September 10, 1859, resulting from overstrain- 
ing himself in opening a box of plants. 
Torrey and Gray dedicated a genus of the Rosacee Nutiallia, to 
this prince of scientists. 
Henry Shaw has honored him by placing a small obelisk of granite 
near the north end of the museum building in the Missouri Botanical 
Garden, with the following inscriptions: on the north side, “ In Hon- 
our of American Science,” and on the south side, “ To the Memory of 
Thomas Nuttall, born in England 1786 and died September, 1859. 
Honour to him the zealous and successful naturalist, the father of 
western American botany, the worthy compeer of Barton, Michaux, 
- Hooker, Torrey, Gray and Engelmann.” He also placed over the en- 
trance of the main greenhouse in the Garden three busts: that of 
Linneus in the middle, and those of Nuttall and Gray on either side. 
Although Nuttall explored the Missouri country on two different 
occasions and worked in Arkansas, he seems never to have published 
any considerable list of plants found by himself near St. Louis. 
