27i Dr. Hooker on American Botany. 



the country, and collected materials to the utmost extent of 

 his means and abilities ; and it is certain that he did this 

 under many and great disadvantages. His travels were ex- 

 tensive ; for he remained nearly twelve years in America, 

 and in two summers only he went over an extent of country, 

 equal to 6000 miles, principally on foot, and with no compan- 

 ion save a dog and his gun. From the first four or five years 

 of his residence in America, Pursh seems to have been chiefly 

 employed in collecting plants about Philadelphia, and in re- 

 ceiving them from his correspondents for cultivation in his 

 gardens there. In 1805, he explored the western territories 

 of the southern states, including the high mountains of Vir- 

 ginia and Carolina ; and in 1806, he went through many of 

 the northern States, commencing with the mountains of 

 Pennsylvania, and extending his investigations to those of 

 New Hampshire, embracing the country of the lesser and 

 great lakes. 



But the most important of the advantages to which I al- 

 lude, were derived by Pursh's personal acquaintance with, 

 and communications from, various botanists, who about this 

 time were to be found in different parts of the United 

 States. 



Among these, the first undoubtedly in point of rank and 

 character, will stand the amiable Dr. Muhlenberg, minister 

 of the German church at Lancaster, in Pennsylvania. He 

 was thoroughly conversant with the vegetable productions of 

 his own district, and in a measure with those of America gen- 

 erally : for he published, in 1813, a Catalogue of the Plants 

 of North America, which contains a great number of new spe- 

 cies ; and what redounds still more to his credit, though it 

 was a posthumous work, he was the author of an excellent 

 treatise on the Grasses and Sedges of North .America, which 

 was edited in 1817 by his son, assisted, as he tells us in the 

 preface, by Mr. Elliott, Mr. Baldwin, and Mr, Collins. This 

 Work is entirely in Latin. Dr. Muhlenberg carried on a 

 most extensive correspondence with the botanists of Europe, 

 by whom he was greatly esteemed. He supplied the cele- 

 brated Hedwig with many of the rare American mosses, 

 which were published either in the Stirpes Cryptogamicce of 

 that author, or in the Species Muscorum. To Sir J. E Smith, 

 and Mr. Dawson Turner, he likewise sent many plants, and 

 one of his new mosses was published by the latter gentleman 

 in the Annals of Botany, under the name of Fiinaria Mnhleji- 



