493 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
ton. Meriwether lost his father early in life, and one of his uncles 
acted as his guardian. At the age of thirteen he was sent to the Latin 
school, where he remained until he was eighteen, when he returned 
home to help run the farm. At the age of twenty he entered as a vol- 
unteer a body of militia which was called out by General Washington 
to quell troubles in the western states, and from the militia he entered 
the regular service as a lieutenant. When twenty-three years old he 
was promoted to a captaincy and made paymaster of his regiment. 
He was personally well known to Thomas Jefferson, and when the 
latter proposed that two persons should be sent up the Missouri River, 
across the Rockies and down the Columbia to the Pacific Ocean, he 
eagerly offered to go. A few years later Jefferson, remembering the 
eagerness of Captain Lewis to make the trip, made him leader of the 
expedition, which successfully carried out the plans, and is now known 
as the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Captain Clark was made the leader 
in the absence of Lewis. The expedition started in 1803 and returned 
in 1806. Congress gave both leaders grants of land, and Lewis was 
made governor of the territory of Louisiana, while Clark was made a 
general of militia and agent for Indian affairs. Upon assuming his 
duties as governor, Lewis found many factions and parties, but his 
even-handed justice to all soon established respect for himself, and 
eventually removed animosities. While on a trip to Washington he 
suffered a temporary attack of insanity, and committed suicide on Oc- 
tober 11, 1809. 
Pursh has named a genus of the Portulacacer, Lewisia, in his honor. 
During the early part of the nineteenth century it was much the 
fashion for botanists to collect living plants and cultivate them in 
gardens, these gardens sometimes being quite extensive. Sometimes 
they were but temporary resting places for the plants until they could be 
sent to European countries as novelties to be introduced there because 
of some desirable quality. André Michaux had such gardens into 
which he gathered his plants, and when opportunity offered sent them 
to France. Many of our early botanists had their own gardens in which 
they cultivated all of the different plants they could find, and thus be- 
came acquainted with every detail concerning them. The Bartram and 
Marshall gardens near Philadelphia were good examples of these early 
collections of living plants. 
Among many persons sent from Europe to this country for the pur-* 
pose of collecting new and rare plants was one John Bradbury,‘ who 
was commissioned to act as the agent of the Liverpool Botanical So- 
“Bradbury, John, “ Travels in the haces of America in the Years 1809, 
1810 and Got ” 1-346, 1819, 2d editi 
co C. W., Transylvania Jeu as Med., etc., 34: 12-13, 
, Jas., and Boulger, G. S., “ Biographical Index - A, and 
Irish eu 21, 1893. 
