IX NORTH AMERICA. 28 



scription of the Plants of New England. The volume is dated in 

 1785 ; but that essay was probably printed a year or two prior to 

 the completion of the volume. 



Doctor Cutler was one of the valuable men of his day. He 

 not only distinguished himself by his attainments in natural science, 

 but was also one of that enterprising band who led the way into our 

 western wilds, and became the founders of the great State of Ohio. 

 He afterwards, however, returned to Massachusetts, where he died, 

 on the 28th of July, 1823, aged 81 years. 



In the latter end of the year 1785, Humphry Marshall, of 

 Chester County, Pennsylvania, published his Arbustum Ameri- 

 caniim, a description of the forest trees and shrubs, natives of the 

 American United States. This is believed to be the first strictly 

 American botanical tvork, that is to say, the first treatise on 

 American plants, written by a native American, and printed in 

 this country ; and, under all the discouraging circumstances attend- 

 ing its production, it does much credit to the attainments and en- 

 terprise of the author. 



In 1787, Dr. Schoepf, a German physician, who had passed 

 several years in the United States, published, at Erlangen, an 

 American Materia Medica, chiefly from the vegetable kingdom. 

 which notices a considerable number of our plants, and their pro- 

 perties. Other interesting accounts of our medicinal plants have 

 since been published : Professor B. S. Barton, in 1798, and sub- 

 sequently, published several tracts under the title of Collections for 

 an Essay towards a Materia Medica of the United States ; and a 

 handsome work, entitled American Medical Botany, by Jacob 

 Bigelow, M.D., of Boston, appeared in 1817, and after. 



The Flora Caroliniana, by Thomas Walter, was published in 

 London, in the year 1788. It was a highly respectable and useful 

 performance. 



In 1791, William Bartram's Travels in the Carolinas, Georgia, 

 and Florida, appeared, giving an interesting account of that region, 

 and also of a number of new southern plants.. 



Some interesting papers on North American plants began now 

 to be published in the Transactions of the American Philosophical 

 Society, by Professor B. S. Barton, Rev. Dr. Muhlenberg, 

 Palisot de Beauvois, and others. In subsequent years, those 

 Transactions were greatly enriched by botanical communications 



