SKETCH OF GOTTHILF H. E. MUHLENBERG. 695 



recognition of his work are patent in all his writings and trans- 

 actions. When Dr. Barton announced, in 1791, his illustrated 

 Flora of Pennsylvania as in preparation, Muhlenberg concluded 

 that as that author had seen his manuscripts and herbarium, it 

 "would not be necessary for him to publish anything except a few 

 additional notes which he might make during the year, and a 

 Floral Calendar. " Excuse my enthusiasm for science," he wrote 

 to Dr. Cutler, in 1792, "which has given me so many pleasant 

 hours, and which, I know, has been cultivated by you with great 

 success. Botany needs your co-operation, and when you have pre- 

 pared a full table, please leave a few fragments for me." It was 

 this readiness to give credit to the merit of others, combined with 

 his clear vision of the confusion that threatened to arise from the 

 continuance of planless labors, that decided him as early as 1785 

 to bring out a plan for common labor in making up the Flora of 

 North America. He came to the Philosophical Society again in 

 1790 or 1791 with this plan. " I repeat," he writes, "my formerly 

 expressed desire that a number of my learned countrymen should 

 unite in botanical investigation and send in their floras to the 

 society for revision and publication, so that by combination of the 

 floras of the different States we may obtain a flora of the United 

 States which shall rest on good and definite observations." While 

 this plan was not carried into execution through the medium of 

 the American Philosophical Society, Muhlenberg again and again 

 returned to it in his extensive correspondence. Thus he wrote : 

 " Others should do the same (that is, search out the flora of the 

 neighborhood of their homes), and, after collecting material for a 

 dozen years, let a Flora of North America be written." Further, 

 " I first sent in a sketch, and in 1790 an index of all the plants that 

 grow here, in the expectation that my botanical friends would join 

 in working up the floras of their several States, so that in about 

 ten years a more general work might be undertaken." And in 

 another place : " If the botanists continue to proceed in the way 

 they are going, in a few years all will be confusion. In order to 

 be sure, we should confer with one another. For this purpose I 

 have printed my Index before publishing full descriptions." A 

 letter to Dr. Cutler, of November 12,1792, goes more into particu- 

 lars ; it reads : " You have made the beginning of a Flora of New 

 England, and all friends of botany wish that you would go on and 

 complete the work. Let each of our American botanists do some- 

 thing, and the wealth of America would soon be recognized. 

 Michaux should do South Carolina and Georgia ; Kromsch, North 

 Carolina ; Greenway, Virginia and Maryland ; Barton, New Jer- 

 sey, Delaware, and the lower parts of Pennsylvania ; Bartram, 

 Marshall, and Muhlenberg, each his neighborhood ; Mitchell, New 

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



