4 The Pennsylvania-German Society. 



interest in the plant-world, no doubt enkindled or 

 strengthened, during his residence in Halle, when 

 the star of Linnaeus was in the ascendant, now be- 

 came active and grew stronger and stronger to the 

 end of life. Not only was the county of Lancaster 

 thoroughly explored by him, but he opened and kept 

 up an extensive correspondence and exchanges with 

 the most eminent botanists of his day in Europe and 

 America, and the superior excellence of his work won 

 ample acknowledgment from many learned men and 

 societies.* 



The printed works upon which rests the fame of 

 Muhlenberg, as a botanist, are only two in number, 

 neither of them voluminous, and yet of the high- 

 est value to the students of our flora. The first bears 

 the title : "Catalogue of the hitherto known native and 

 naturalized Plants of North America" and came from 

 the press at Lancaster under his own supervision, in 

 1813 ; the other: A Fuller Description of the Grasses 

 and Sedges of North America, indigenous and natural- 

 ized" in Latin, with a preface by his son Frederick, 

 was published in Philadelphia in 1817, two years 

 after his death. 



The Catalogue is a great deal more than the simple 

 title imports, because it embraces condensed and ab- 

 breviated descriptions, from which the species meant 

 can be generally identified. In both works, however, 



*A full account of this phase of his life is contained in an admirable 

 paper in the German language from the pen of the late Professor J. M. 

 Maisch, of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, read before the 

 Pionierverein in 1886, of which an English translation ought to be made 

 and published. 



