BOTANICAL LITERATURE. 289 
the genera will have been more judiciously limited, and the 
species better defined. A bias of this sort, magnifying the 
importance of the new edition, and depreciative of the merits. 
of the old, is, we think, already too well seated in the botani- 
cal mind of this country; and the interests of our science, 
no less than the considerations of justice due to all concerned 
in the production of the older treatise, require that we combat 
that prejudice. 
A correct view of the whole ease will hardly be gained 
without a retrospective glance at the condition of botanical 
science in North America in 1838. 
Although down to about the year 1830 more than one-half 
of what is now comprised within United States’ territory was, 
botanieally speaking, almost unknown, the regions eastward 
of the Mississippi had been fairly well explored. Their 
botany, though not, to any date then recent, brought within 
the limits of a single treatise more respectable than Eaton's 
Manual, was nevertheless in such an advanced condition that 
little more could then be done than judiciously to compile 
from the elaborate treatises of Walter, Michaux, Pursh, 
Elliott and Nuttall, and the less pretentious but equally 
valuable publieations of Muhlenberg, Schweinitz, Bigelow, 
Le Conte, Torrey and many more. It is remarkable that, for 
a truly brilliant epoch in North American botany, we are 
obliged to revert to the first quarter of the century which 
now draws near its close. At no other time had we, in pro- 
portion to the whole population of the country, and the facili- 
ties for field and closet work—nay, I may almost say unquali- 
fiedly—at no period had we so great a number of learned, 
able and zealous botanists at work as then. Account for the 
fact as we may, the botanical history of our latest five and 
twenty years will not yield us ten names of equal weight 
with those above enumerated ; and this notwithstanding our 
doubled and redoubled population, unnumbered centers of 
manifold greater facilities for travel, and our in- 
h are still but half explored. 
East, from Louisiana and 
learning, 
viting fields unmeasured whic 
In 1838, we say, the flora of the 
