520 The Botanical Gazette. [December, 
door sports and natural history. He was prepared for col- 
lege by Dr. William Neilson, author of a formerly well known 
Irish grammar, through whom he acquired an interest in the 
antiquities of Ireland. His education was continued at Dub- 
lin University where he showed marked proficiency in the 
mechanical and physical sciences and attracted particular at- 
tention for his knowledge of entomology and botany. His 
local collections of insects and mosses even at this time were 
large and valuable. In 1817 he was graduated with the de- 
gree B. A., and continuing his graduate work he took the 
degrees M. A. and M. B. in 1820.6 He had already spent 
one or two summers in Paris, making there extensive col- 
lections of the plants of the Jardin des Plantes. After leav- 
ing the University he went to Geneva, where under the di- 
rection of DeCandotie he continued his botanical studies. He 
made a large collection of continental plants, compared them 
critically with DeCandolle’s collections, and afterward, be- 
ginning in the spring of 1823, devoted himself to the elabor- 
ation of a monographic essay on the Dipsacee. The results 
of his investigations were published later in the year in his 
Mémoire sur les Dipsacées, an excellent work which, together 
with additional manuscript notes prepared in part at least at 
the herbarium of Delessert in Paris and communicated to De- 
Candollein 1824, formed the basis for the elaboration of the Dip- 
sacee published in the Prodromus in 1830.7 The memoir 
was republished in 1824 by the Société de Physique et d’His- 
toire Naturelle de Genéve. At the time of publication of his 
Dipsacee Coulter was already a Doctor of Medicine and @ 
member of the Royal Irish Academy. This membership, 
which began March 16, 1819, he retained, as may be seen 
from the lists of members occasionally published in the Ac- 
ademy’s Transactions, until his death. 
In the year 1823 the Brazilian genus Coulteria of the Legu- 
minosz, now treated as a section of Caesalpinia, was name 
in honor of Dr. Coulter,§ and the statement made that he 
was about to undertake an exploration in Chile. Returning 
to Ireland in 1824, he made preliminary arrangements for @ 
trip to Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, California, and Mexico. He 
subsequently decided, however, to begin his travels with the 
 CEbens dale cae bok, Lea eer eee ae 
from the records + SS EO la anim gece atin ire 
. DeCandolle, Prodr. 4: 643. 1830. 
*H.B.K. Nov. Gen. & Sp. 6: 328. ead, : 
