30 BOTANICAL GAZETTE. [ Feb. 
of any one genus of peat appears to me rather hyperbolical. 
Pray how i is this matter? 
n was a very scholarly man; he was educated at 
Edinburgh ; his letters to’ Linneus were addressed in elegant 
_ Latin. He practiced medicine at Charleston, S. C., till after the 
revolution, when, with many other royalists, ‘he felt compelled to 
return to Great Brits ain. He attempted twice to penetrate through 
the wilderness to the Mississippi river, but was compelled to re- 
turn by the danger arising from the disturbed state of the coun- 
try. He sent many plants as well as animals to Linnzus through 
Ellis and directly. He was very anxious to have a plant named 
for his friend pa valued correspondent, Ellisia; he sent speci- 
mens and figures of the plant and persisted in his choice a long 
time. But Linneeus decided that his plant belonged to a genus 
already established; this was a great disappointment to “him 
Ellis named the e elegant genus Gardenia after him 
The difficulties of shipping plants and sending letters in that 
day are well illustrated in many of his letters. ae soak and 
packages were captured by the French time and again, and his 
dJamentations are pitiful. He writes to Ellis after one “iia: dis- 
-aster: 
My grief at my own and your ee 7" tama a . Rawivel chen A few days 
cago I Suaed that both Captain Coats and Cheeseman were taken and with them 
‘the two most er bie et of seeds chang eee I could promise or even 
hope to A hes ure for ere was every kind that you mentioned in your 
letter to me an eee new and bike shrubs sence es. They were a care- 
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The Linnean ersten of classes and orders held sway for a hun- 
years and many people in this country, not yet very’ old, 
Biadied tg Lincela: s Botany. Even after the recognition of 
the natural system of Jussieu, it was customary to prefix to floras 
the Linnean system as a key to the genera. No other such conve- 
nient artifical classification of plants was ever invented, and the im- 
petus it gave to the study of plants throughout the civilized world 
was never equaled. The facility with which the plants of a lim- 
‘ited region could be marshaled into regular order was wonderful 
and young men and women, and old, too, took to the study of 
botany; it became the craze of the time. Linnwus sent his stu- 
dents abroad and busied himself with arranging under their proper 
lasses and orders the plants from the uttermost parts of the earth. 
The latest edition of his ag Ans Nature contained more than 
1,200 genera and nearly 8,000 species. 
It is a. cabal fact that pastes did not at first perceive the 
