114 ASPLENIUM EBENOIDES. SCOTT S SPLEENWOKT. 



Thus it became Impossible for his scientific friends to aid him to 

 any great extent, though conscious of his eminent talents. His 

 botanical acuteness enabled him easily to place any unknown 

 plant from any part of the world in its systematic relationships, 

 and in a remarkably short time to discover its proper name and 

 history. Had he retained his proper faculties he might have 

 become a prince in Botany. He came to America in 1848, taking 

 up with the horticultural profession for a living. In 1867-8, his 

 mind gave way, and he died a few years ago in the State lunatic 

 asylum at Harrisburg. 



It is no wonder that so acute an observer should have detected 

 a new species in this solitary plant. But it was strange that he 

 could find no leading botanist in America, to whom he sub- 

 n-iitted specimens, to agree with him, or give him the slightest 

 encouragement in his researches — as he thought, because he was 

 but "a poor gardener." Satisfied, however, that it was new. he 

 described it himself with an illustration in the magazine above 

 cited, but still no notice was taken of it in our own land. He 

 then thought he would try the European botanists, and in 1866, 

 one year after his own description, the Rev. M. G. Berkeley 

 noticed it in " the Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society of 

 London" in July of that year as "probably a hybrid," but 

 retaining Mr. Scott's name. This little piece of history has its 

 valuable lesson. It teaches the student to search carefully for 

 facts; and when he, himself, is sure of the facts, not to be too 

 easily disheartened because others do not at once see things as 

 he does. 



Since Mr. Scott found his single plant, several others have 

 been found in the same vicinity by Mr. Bburquin, a botanist of 

 Camden, New Jersey; by Miss Julia S. Tutwiler, of Greene 

 Springs, near the Black Warrior river ; and by W. H. Leggett, at 

 Canaan in Connecticut. Mr. John Williamson, in his "Ferns of 

 Kentucky," published in 1878, remarks: "We have in Kentucky 

 all the Aspleniums found in the Northern United States, except 

 the somewhat doubtful .-J. cbenoides,'' — but before the sheets of 



