10 Botanical Excursion to the Mountains of North Carolina. 



visited the Southern States in 1807; and the latter, after the de- 

 cease of the father in 1811, returned to this country, and contin- 

 ued his indefatigable researches until 1817. 



Many of the rarest plants of these mountains were made known, 

 especially to English gardens and collections, by Mr. John Lyon, 

 whose indefatigable researches are highly spoken of by Pursh, 

 Nuttall and Elliott. It is very probable that he had visited the 

 mountains previous to his assuming the charge of Mr. Hamilton's 

 collections near Philadelphia, which he resigned to Pursh in 1802. 

 At a later period, however, he assiduously explored this region, 

 from Georgia as far north at least as the Grandfather Mountain ,• 

 and died at Asheville, in Buncombe Co., North Carolina, some- 

 time between 1814 and 1818. I am informed by my friend, the 

 Rev. Mr. Curtis, that his journals and a portion of his herbarium 

 were preserved at Asheville for many years, and that it is proba- 

 ble they may yet be found. 



MicHAUx the younger, author of the Sylva Americana, who 

 accompanied his father in some of his earlier journeys, returned 

 to this country in 1801, and crossed the Alleghany Mountains 

 twice ; first in Pennsylvania on his way to the Western States, 

 and the next year in North Carolina, on his return to the sea-board. 

 In crossing from Jonesboro', Tennessee, to Morganton, by way of 

 Toe River, (not Doe River ^ as stated in his Travels,) he accident- 

 ally stopped at the house of Davenport, his father's guide in these 

 mountains. The observations of the younger Michaux on this 

 part of the Alleghany Mountains, in a chapter of his Travels de- 

 voted to that subject, are mainly accurate. 



''In the beginning of 1805," Pursh, as he states in the pre- 

 face to his Flora, " set out for the mountains and western territo- 

 ries of the Southern States, beginning at Maryland and extending 

 to the Carolinas, (in which tract the interesting high mountains 

 of Virginia and Caroliua took my particular attention,) and re- 

 turning late in the autumn through the lower countries along the 

 sea-coast to Philadelphia." This plan, however, was not fully 

 carried out, since he does not appear to have crossed the Alle- 

 ghanies into the great Western Valley, nor to have botanized 

 along these mountains farther south than where the New River 



country, and to which the reader is referred for more particular infoi-mation. A. 

 full list of the North American plants introduced into England by the father and 

 son, 18 appended to that account. 



