22 AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND 



imens of American plants for their herbaria. I replied 

 in the same tune, that I was just going to cross the At- 

 lantic to collect them, etc. One of them, especially, 

 clung to me, with a specimen plant the professor was 

 to lecture on, and asked me if I would tell him the 

 name ! To that question I asked him how long he had 

 been attending the lectures. He replied " two or three 

 years." " Three years ! and you do not know that 

 plant that grows on the old wall of your father's gar- 

 den ? " It was Linaria cyrabalaria, and in three years 

 he had not been able to know that plant. After the 

 lecture was over I asked rny friend if there were many 

 students of the same stamp as the one who had asked 

 me the name of a plant growing with him. " No," 

 he said, " not perhaps over two-thirds ! ! " We went off 

 making comments on the young " savants 5 ' we had 

 just left. All of them had received a college educa- 

 tion, 



On the last day of July, 1837, 1 left Paris for 

 Havre, whence I sailed for New York, where I landed 

 on the 7th of September, 1837. 



Then I was on free ! land with slaves not far off, 

 held in bondage by another class of philosophers, of 

 the school of the " Koman patricians," who, like 

 Brutus, who stabbed his father, Caesar, because he was 

 a tyrant, and he at the same time compelled his slaves 



