THE FLORA OF NORTH AMERICA. 247 



down the Mohawk Valley to Saratoga, and north to the upper 

 part of Lake Champlain and to the lesser Green Mountains 

 in the vicinity of Rutland, but not beyond. Discouraged by 

 the lateness of the season, and disheartened — as he had all 

 along been — by the failure and insufficiency of remittances 

 from his patron, Pursh turned back from Rutland on the 22d 

 of September, reached New York on the 1st of October, and 

 Philadelphia on the 5th. The next year (1807) Pursh took 

 charge of the Botanic Garden which Dr. Hosack had formed 

 at New York and afterward sold to the State, which soon 

 made it over to Columbia College. 1 In 1810, he made 

 a voyage to the West Indies for the recovery of his health. 

 Returning in the autumn of 1811, he landed at Wiscasset, in 

 Maine, "had an opportunity of visiting Professor Peck of 

 Cambridge College, near Boston," and of seeing the alpine 

 plants which Peck had collected on the White Mountains. 2 

 At the end of the latter year or early in 1812 he went to 

 England with his collections and notes ; and at the close of 

 1813, under the auspices of Lambert, he produced his Flora, 

 consulting, the while, the herbaria of Clayton, Pallas, Plu- 

 kenet, Catesby, Morison, Sherard, Walter, and that of Banks. 

 Evidently such consultations and the whole study must have 



1 Expecting, no doubt, that it would be kept up. But the Elgin Bo- 

 tanic Garden was soon discontinued. It occupied the block of ground 

 now covered by the buildings of the College, and the surrounding tract — 

 now so valuable — from which the college derives an ample revenue. 

 Noblesse oblige, and it may be expected that the College, so enriched, will, 

 before long, provide itself with a botanical professorship, and see to the 

 careful preservation and maintenance of the precious Torrey Herbarium, 

 which it possesses along with other subsidiary herbaria. 



2 It is at Wiscasset, therefore, that Pursh's " Plantago cucullata, Lam. 

 ... in wet rocky situations, Canada and Province of Maine," is to be 

 sought. Mr. Pringle has recently found the related P. Cornuti (which 

 may be the plant meant), in Lower Canada, not far from the other side 

 of Maine. 



It must have been in Professor Peck's herbarium (no longer extant), 

 that Pursh saw what he took to be Alchemilla alpina, which he marks 

 " v. s" and refers to from memory only, probably mistakeidy. For it 

 has not since been detected either in Vermont or New Hampshire, or 

 anywhere in North America ; and Pursh's Journal makes it certain that 

 he did not reach any alpine region in the Green Mountains. 



