414 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 



Cambridge while Dr. Bigelow was a medical student. The 

 latter possessed the gift of exposition which Dr. Peck lacked ; 

 and it naturally came to pass that Dr. Bigelow repeated this 

 course of lectures alone for a year or two afterward. 



In the spring of 1814 he brought out the first edition of his 

 " Florula Bostoniensis," the book which, mainly in its second 

 edition, has been the manual for New England herborization 

 down to a recent day, or rather to a day which seems to us re- 

 cent. The original volume, of 268 octavo pages, describes the 

 plants which " have been collected during the two last seasons 

 in the vicinity of Boston, within a circuit of from five to ten 

 miles," exceeding those limits only in the case of Magnolia 

 (from Manchester) and one or two more remarkable plants. 

 We know of no other Flora of the kind which has been pre- 

 pared so quickly and so well. The characters are short diag- 

 noses, and in good part compiled. But the descriptive matter 

 must have been original ; and it shows that aptitude for seiz- 

 ing the best points of character or most available distinctions, 

 and of indicating them in few and clear words, which has 

 made this Manual so deservedly popular. Similar merits 

 distinguish, on its botanical side, Dr. Bigelow' s " American 

 Medical Botany," a quarto work which was published, in three 

 parts or volumes, between 1817 and 1821, with colored plates 

 — at that time thought to be very good ones indeed — of the 

 principal medicinal plants of the country. He also brought 

 out an American edition of Sir James Edward Smith's " Intro- 

 duction to Botany " ; and his botanical knowledge, along with 

 that of the Materia Medica generally and his classical scholar- 

 ship, placed him at the head, or at the laboring oar, of the 

 committee which in 1820 formed the American Pharmacopoeia. 

 The writer used this volume in his medical student days, and 

 remembers dimly how the account of minor preparations, com- 

 ing down to jams and conserves, ended with the classical 

 " Jam satis est mihi." 



The second edition of the " Florula Bostoniensis," published 

 in 1824, while retaining its modest title, was nearly doubled 

 in size and in the number of plants it contained, the whole 

 area of New England included ; and it became the manual of 



