Dr. Hooker on American Botany. 1£>3 



of American botany ; and we rejoice that the execution of it 

 has fallen into such able hands. 



Mr. Nuttall has added still more to his credit as a natu- 

 ralist and a man of most acute observation, by the publica- 

 tion of his Travels in the Arkansa Territory. This was a 

 journey accompanied with great difficulty, and not a little 

 danger. The plants which he collected were numerous and 

 interesting, very different from the vegetation of the rest of 

 the United States, and many of them perfectly new. Some 

 detached accounts of the botany of this singular district have 

 already appeared, particularly in the Journal of the Academy 

 of Nahiral Sciences at Philadelphia, and not a few of the 

 plants themselves are now cultivated in our botanic gardens, 

 from seeds gathered by Mr. Nuttall. 



This gentleman now occupies the chair of Natural History 

 in the University of New Cambridge. 



We regret not to be able to give any account of Eaton's 

 Manual of Botany, nor yet of Bar toil's more extended Flora 

 of North America, (which is, we believe, in the course of 

 publication,) never having had the opportunity of seeing 

 these works. 



The various scientific journals which are published in 

 America, contain many memoirs upon the indigenous plant?. 

 Among the first of these in point of value, and we think al- 

 so the first with regard to time, we must name Sitthnaii's 

 American Journal of Science, in which we find Botanical 

 Tracts by Professor Ives of Yale College, and Mr. Rafines- 

 que, by Dr. Torrey, a physician at New York, " On the 

 plants collected by D. 13. Douglass of West-Point, in the 

 expedition around the great lakes, and the upper waters of 

 the Mississipi, under Governor Cass, during the summers of 

 181S — 20 ;" and also " on a new species of Usnea* from 



* Dr. Torrey did not possess the fructification of this plant. We were so 

 fortunate as to obtain a specimen of it through the kindness of Mr. Edwards, 

 late surgeon of the Hecla, which came from the same country, and has line 

 shields. It is one of the handsomest species of Usnea that we are acquainted 

 with ; but it certainly approaches very near the U. sphucclala of Brown, from 

 the Arctic regions. Dr. Mitchell, who communicated the plant to Dr. Torrey, 

 seems inclined to believe this lichen to be the only vegetable production of 

 New South Shetland. We have received half a-dozen different ones, and will 

 venture to predict that many more will yet be discovered. 



