130 SOME AMERICAN MEDICAL BOTANISTS 



cart, Short botanizing on the way; and the jour- 

 ney, whether owing to Mary or to the speci- 

 mens, is described as " replete with interest." So 

 also was the scene of his first settled practice, 

 Hopkinsville, then a wild, romantic district, 

 where he gathered patients and plants. 



The botanical journeyings must have been 

 very interesting. Picture Short, his brother, and 

 three other botanists setting out " in a light cov- 

 ered wagon to study the autumnal flora of the 

 prairies, travelling over 400 miles in Illinois." 

 What careful pressing and storing in the evening, 

 with thoughts flying ahead across the Atlantic to 

 botanical comrades destined eventually to receive 

 some of the spoils of the day! 



Short's botanical colleagues always regretted 

 that he could not or would not write a book con- 

 cerning his researches; but he never took to the 

 idea, and his chief writings are Notices of West- 

 ern Botany and Conchology, a paper published 

 jointly by himself and Mr. H. Halbert Eaton 

 ( 1 830) ; Instructions for the Gathering and Pres- 

 ervation of Plants in Herbaria; a Catalogue of 

 the Plants of Kentucky, which had two supple- 

 ments; The Bibliographia Botanica (1836); 

 Sketch of the Progress of Botany in Illinois 

 (1845) ; and, with his colleague, Dr. John Easton 

 Cook, he founded The Transylvania Journal of 

 Medicine, in 1828. 



