27S Dr. Hooker on American Botany. 



he has included all that have been described by other authors, 

 sometimes made observations upon them, and added a very 

 considerable number of new individuals, which have been 

 discovered by himself or his friends. This book may there- 

 fore be well said to form an era in the history of American 

 botany ; and we rejoice that the execution of it has fallen 

 into such able hands. 



Mr. Nuttall has added still more to his credit as a naturalist 

 and a man of most acute observation, by the publication of 

 his Travels in the Arkansas territory. This was a journey 

 accompanied with great difficulty, and not a little danger. 

 The plants which he collected were numerous and interest- 

 ing, very different from the vegetation of the rest of the U. 

 States, and many of them pei'fectly new. Some detached 

 accounts of the botany of this singular district have already 

 appeared, particularly in the Joui-nal of the Academy of JVa- 

 tural Sciences at Philadelphia, and not a few of the plants 

 themselves are now cultivated in our botanic gardens, from 

 seeds gathered by Mr. Nuttall. 



This gentleman now occupies the chair of Natural History 

 in the University of New Cambridge- 



We regret not to be able to give any account of Eaton'' s 

 Manual of Botany, nor yet of Barion''s more extended Flora 

 of North America, (which is, we believe, in the course of 

 publication,) never having had the opportunity of seeing these 

 works. 



The various scientific journals which are published in Ame- 

 rica, contain many memoirs upon the indigenous plants. 

 Among the first of these in point of value, and we think also 

 the first with regard to time, we must name Silliman^s Ameri- 

 can Journal of Science, in which we find Botanical Tracts 

 by Professor Ives of Yale College, and by Mr. Rafinesque ; by 

 Dr. Torrey, a physician at New-York, " on the plants col- 

 lected by D. B. Douglass of West Point, in the expedition 

 around the great lakes, and the upper waters of the Missis- 

 sippi, under Governor Cass, during the summers of ]8l8 — 

 20 j'' and also " on a new species of Usnca* from New 



* Dr. Terrey did not possess the fructification of this plant. We were 

 so fortunate as to obtain a specimen of it through the kindness of Mr. 

 Edwards, late surgeon of the Hecla, which came from the same country, 

 and has fine shields. It is one of the handsomest species of Vsnea that 

 we are acquainted with ; but it certainly approaches very near the U, 

 tphacdata of Brown, from theArctic regions. Dr. Mitchill. wlio coni- 



