EUROPEAN HERBARIA. 7 



The former collected seeds and living plants for Peter Col- 

 linson during more than twenty years, and even at that early 

 day extended his laborious researches from the frontiers of 

 Canada to southern Florida and the Mississippi. All his 

 collections were sent to his patron Collinson, 1 until the death 



1 Mr. Collinson kept up a correspondence with all the lovers of plants 

 in this country, among whom were Governor Colden, Bartram, Mitchell, 

 Clayton, and Dr. Garden, by whose means he procured the introduction 

 of great numbers of North American plants into the English gardens. 

 " Your system," he writes Linnaeus, " I can tell you, obtains much in 

 America. Mr. Clayton and Dr. Colden at Albany, on Hudson's River, in 

 New York, are complete professors, as is Dr. Mitchell at Urbana, on 

 Rappahannock River in Virginia. It is he that has made many and great 

 discoveries in the vegetable world." "I am glad you have the corre- 

 spondence of Dr. Colden and Mr. Bartram. They are both very inde- 

 fatigable, ingenious men. Your system is much admired in North Amer- 

 ica." Again, "I have but lately heard from Mr. Colden. He is well, 

 but what is marvellous, his daughter is perhaps the first lady that has so 

 perfectly studied your system. She deserves to be celebrated." "In 

 the second volume of ' Edinburg Essays ' is published a Latiu botanic dis- 

 sertation by Miss Colden ; perhaps the only lady that makes a profession 

 of the Linnsean system, of which you maybe proud." From all this, bot- 

 any appears to have flourished in the North American colonies. But Dr. 

 Garden about this time writes thus to his friend Ellis : "Ever since I 

 have been in Carolina, I have never been able to set my eye upon one 

 who had barely a regard for botany. Indeed, I have often wondered 

 how there should be one place abounding with so many marks of the di- 

 vine wisdom and power, and not one rational eye to contemplate them ; 

 or that there should be a country abounding with almost every sort of 

 plant, and almost every species of the animal kind, and yet that it 

 should not have pleased God to raise up one botanist. Strange, indeed, 

 that the creature should be so rare ! " But to return to Collinson, the 

 most amusing portion of whose correspondence consists of his letters to 

 Linnaeus shortly after the publication of the "Species Plantarum," in 

 which (with all kindness and sincerity) he reproves the great Swedish 

 naturalist for his innovations, employing the same arguments which a 

 strenuous Linnsean might be supposed to advance against a botanist of 

 these latter days. "I have had the pleasure," Collinson writes, "of 

 reading your ' Species Plantarum,' a very useful and laborious work. 

 But, my dear friend, we that admire you are much concerned that you 

 should perplex the delightful science of botany with changing names that 

 have been well received, and adding new names quite unknown to us. 

 Thus, botany, which was a pleasant study and attainable by most men, is 

 now become, by alterations and new names, the study of a man's life, and 



