92 Selections from the Correspondence of 



damenta Botanica, his Oratio de Telluris habitabilis incremen- 

 to, Celsi Oratio, and your Flora Virginica, Index Supellectilis ; 

 all which I have received safe. But those by Mr. Canwan I 

 have heard nothing of. 



When you write to Dr. Linnaeus, pray offer my humble service 

 to him, and assure him that I shall be very proud of receiving 

 his commands, if in any thing I can serve him in this part of the 

 world. Last summer I sent the characters of the Actcea and 

 Christophoriana baccifera to my good friend Mr. Collinson of 

 London, which I believe he was to communicate to Dr. Linnaeus. 

 It was from Mr. Collinson this spring that I learned with pleas- 

 ure that you had received my letter ; for I began to suspect that 

 it was either lost, or not worth your notice. 



Since you have given me so much encouragement to propose 

 my doubts on the Linnsean system, I shall take the liberty to 

 make them as they occur, without further ceremony, trusting to 

 the indulgence which you have already so fully shown me ; 

 though what I now presume to make goes even to the general 

 distribution of his system into Hermaphroditic Moncecia, Dice- 

 cia, and Polygamia. For if there be species of plants which 

 are evidently of the same genus, and yet according to this sys- 

 tem must be referred to different classes, you must certainly allow 

 it to be a fault in the system. What has given occasion to me 

 for this doubt, is what I wrote to you before, that I had observed 

 some particular plants of the Clematis that carried only male 

 flowers, while others of the same species bore all hermaphrodite 

 flowers. There is no doubt of these plants being of the same 

 species, because they agreed in every thing in the leaf, in the 

 stem, &c, so that not the least distinction could be observed, 

 except that the flowers in one were all male, in the other all her- 

 maphrodite ; neither did I observe any other plant of the same 

 genus that had female flowers. The next is what I likewise ob- 

 served to you before of the Sagitta?'ia, that the species which I 

 observed was evidently distinguished into male and female plants. 

 You may assure yourself it is not an Alisma. according to Lin- 

 nseus's character of this genus, nor no new genus ; but that in 

 every thing it agrees with the character of the Sagittaria, ex- 

 cepting that the flowers are male and female in different plants 

 of the same species. Now I shall mention a third plant, a spe- 

 cimen of which I sent you, though without the flowers, no. 198, 



