GOTTHILF HEINRICH ERNST MUHLENBERG. 65 



wealth of America would soon be recognised. Michaux should 

 do South Carolina and Georgia; Kromsch, North Carolina; 

 Greenway, Virginia and Maryland ; Barton, New Jersey, Del- 

 aware, and the lower parts of Pennsylvania ; Bartram, Mar- 

 shall, and Muhlenberg, each his neighbourhood ; Mitchell, New 

 York ; and you, with the Northern botanists, your States. 

 How much might then be accomplished ! If, then, one of our 

 younger associates Dr. Barton, for instance, whose specialty 

 it is would combine the different floras into one, how pleasant 

 it would be for the botanical world ! I have written to nearly 

 all the persons named above, and hope to receive their concur- 

 rence. Let me know your views about it." Dr. Cutler gave 

 the scheme his unreserved approval. 



This plan was not carried out. Instead of it, Andre Michaux 

 worked the combined collections of his eleven years' travels in 

 the United States, through the French botanist Richard, into a 

 Flora of North America, and it appeared in Paris in 1803, one 

 year after the author's death in Madagascar. 



The publication of this flora did not change Muhlenberg's 

 view of the necessity of comparative work in co-operation, and 

 in order to bring it a step nearer he decided in 1809 to write a 

 catalogue of the then known native and naturalized plants of 

 North America (Catalogus Plantarum America Septentrionalis, 

 hue usque cognitarum indigenarum et ctcurum), the printing of 

 which was finished after nearly nine months of work, at the end 

 of July, 1813. While Michaux had described about fifteen 

 hundred flowering plants and ferns, Muhlenberg was able ten 

 years later to exhibit more than double the number of species, 

 and besides these to add, from specimens mostly collected in 

 Pennsylvania, 175 mosses, 39 liverworts, 32 algae, 176 lichens, 

 and 305 fungi, in all 727 species. The Composite comprised in 

 Michaux 193 species, in Muhlenberg 410. 



Muhlenberg conscientiously named not only the books 

 which he had used in the determination of his collected plants, 

 but also the twenty-eight correspondents in different parts of 

 the United States who had assisted him in his researches by 

 sending plants or seeds. The work gives, besides the botan- 

 ical and English names, only the numbers of the several parts 

 of the flower, the color of the corolla, the character of the 

 fruit, the locality, and the time of flowering, all as briefly as 

 possible. 



