^6 MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



obtaining a prolonged leave of absence from the college authorities at Cambridge 

 to perform this long journey, he concluded to resign his office of Curator of the 

 Botanic Garden. During his short residence in our city [Philadelphia], prepara- 

 tory to his arduous journey across the continent, he was assiduously engaged at 

 the Academy of Natural Sciences, studying Capt. Wyeth's plants, and prepar- 

 iner his memoir on those which he had collected himself in the interior of 

 Arkansas. The result of these labors was the publication of several valuable 

 papers,"^ among them being: 'A Catalogue of a Collection of Plants made 

 chiefly in the Valleys of the Rocky Mountains or Northern Andes, towards the 

 sources of the Columbia River ' ; ' Collections towards a Flora of the Territor)' 

 of Arkansas ' ; ' A Description of some of the rarer or little known plants indig- 

 enous to the United States, from the dried specimens in the herbarium of the 

 Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.' 



Nuttall's journey across the continent was the last that he made into wild 

 and dangerous regions. On this occasion he was accompanied by John K. 

 Townsend, a young naturalist who was sent out to make collections for the Phil- 

 osophical Society and for the Academy of Natural Sciences, and who during this 

 expedition obtained a number of birds new to science, most of which were after- 

 wards described and figured by Audubon. Nuttall and Townsend left Philadel- 

 phia early in 1834, joining Capt. Wyeth's party at St. Louis in March. On the 

 28th of April their " caravan, consisting of seventy men, and two hundred and 

 fifty horses, began its march " ^ at Independence, Missouri, according to Town- 

 send, whose well-known ' Narrative ' gives a full and very interesting account of 

 the expedition. He and Nuttall reached Fort Vancouver at the mouth of the 

 Columbia River on the i6th of the following September. Towards the close of 

 the year they sailed for the Sandwich Islands, where they arrived on January 5, 

 1835, and remained upwards of three months. 



Returning to Fort Vancouver, they spent most of the following spring and 

 summer on or near the Pacific Coast. Durand says that Nuttall sailed for home 

 from the Sandwich Islands in a Boston vessel, and that he " arrived in Boston 

 in the beginning of October, 1835."^ These statements have been since 

 repeated in substance by other wiiters, apparently on the authority of Durand, 

 but, as Mr. F. V. Coville has pointed out* they are obviously erroneous, for 



' E. Durand, Biographical Notice of the late Thomas Nuttall, Proceedings of the American 

 Philosophical Society, VII, i860, 305-306. 



^ J. K. Townsend, Narrative of a Journey across the Rocky Mountains, to the Columbia River, 

 1839, 27. 



'E. Durand, Biographical Notice of the late Thomas Nuttall, Proceedings of the American 

 Philosophical Society, VII, i860, 311. 



* F. V. Coville, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, XIII, 1899, 109-113. 



