GOTTHILF HEINRICH ERNST MUHLENBERG. 69 



while his daughter was teaching him the Lord's Prayer, all his 

 former acquisitions, like a sudden effulgence, returned to him 

 in their completeness, and he laboured successfully in the min- 

 istry for the ten subsequent years. Such instances of disor- 

 dered mental action are few in number." 



This review of Muhlenberg's botanical work would not be 

 complete without special mention of his scientific correspond- 

 ence, his personal intercourse with naturalists, and the honours 

 he received. Among his foreign correspondents were Dille- 

 nius, Hedwig, Hoffmann, Persoon, Pursh, Smith, Schopf, Schre- 

 ber, Sturm, Willdenow, William Aiton, of Kew; Batsch, the 

 mycologist ; Palisot de Beauvoir in Paris, and Dr. Thibaud in 

 Montpellier ; Christian Ludwig Schkuhr, of Wittenberg, an 

 eminent cryptogamist ; Professor and Medical Counsellor Hein- 

 rich Adolph Schrader, of Gottingen ; Kurt Sprengel, professor 

 of medicine and botanist at Halle; and Prof. Olof Swartz, one 

 of Linnaeus's most eminent pupils. Among the twenty-eight 

 home correspondents mentioned by Muhlenberg in the preface 

 to his catalogue are the Rev. Christian Denke, of Nazareth, 

 Pa. ; the Rev. Samuel Kramph, of North Carolina ; the Mora- 

 vian bishop Jacob Van Vleck, and Dr. Christopher Miiller, of 

 Harmony, Pa. One of the most valued was Dr. Baldwin, of 

 South Carolina, and Muhlenberg's letters to him have been 

 published by William Darlington, in a volume entitled Bald- 

 winiana. All or nearly all these correspondents were enter- 

 tained by him in his home at Lancaster, which was open to all 

 students of plants, and was usually visited by them when they 

 came to Philadelphia. Alexander von Humboldt and Aime 

 Bonpland sought him there on their return from their long 

 sojourn in Spanish America; and Humboldt's letter acknowl- 

 edging his hospitality is the last which that master in science 

 wrote in America. 



Learned societies and institutions likewise covered him 

 with their honours. The University of Pennsylvania gave him 

 the degree of Master of Arts in 1786; Princeton College, that 

 of Doctor of Divinity in 1787. He was elected a member of 

 the American Philosophical Society on January 22, 1785, along 

 with Joseph Priestley and James Madison. Of other societies 

 he received diplomas : from the Imperial Academy of Erlangen, 

 1791 ; the Society of Friends of Natural History, Berlin, 1798; 

 the Westphalian Natural History Society, 1798; the Phyto- 



