278 Dr, Hooker on American Botany. 
the country, and collected materials to the utmost extent of 
his means and abilities ; and it is certain that he did this 
under many and great disadvantages. His travels were ex- 
tensive ; for he remained nearly twelve years in America, 
and in two summers only he went over an extent of country, 
employed in collecting plants about Philadelphia, and in re- 
ceiving them from his correspondents for cultivation in his 
gardens there. In 1805, he explored the western territories 
of the southern states, including the high mountains of Vir- 
ginia and Carolina; and in 1806, he went through many of 
the s, commencing with the mountains of 
on pide and extending his investigations to those of 
New Hampshire, embracing the country of the lesser and 
great lakes. 
But the most important of the advantages to which I al- 
lude, were derived by Pursh’s personal acquaintance with, 
and communications from, various botanists, who about this 
time were to be found in different parts of the United | 
States. 
Among these, the first undoubtedly in point of rank and 
character, will stand the amiable Dr. Muhlenberg, minister 
of the German church at Lancaster, in Pennsylvania. He 
was thoroughly conversant with the vegetable productions of 
his own district, and in a measure with those of America gen- 
erally: forhe published, in 1813, a Catalogue of the Plants 
of North America, which contains a great number of new spe- 
cies ; and what redounds still more to his credit, though it 
was a posthumous work, he was the author of an excellent 
treatise on the Grasses and Sedges of North America, which 
was edited in 1817 by his son, assisted, as he tells us in the 
preface, by Mr. Elliott, Mr. Baldwin, and Mr. Collins. This 
work is entirely in Latin. Dr. Muhlenberg carried on a 
most extensive correspondence with the botanists of Europe, 
by whom he was greatly esteemed. He supplied the cele- 
brated Hedwig with many of the rare American mosses, 
which were published either in the Stirpes Cryptogamice of 
that author, or in the Species Muscorum. To Sir J. E. Smith, 
and Mr. Dawson Turner, he likewise sent many plants, and 
one of his new mosses was published by the latter gentleman 
im the nnals of Botany, under the name of Funaria Muhlen- 
