8 Notices of European Herbaria. 



The Linnseaii Society also possesses the proper herbarium of 

 its founder and first president, Sir James E. Smith, which is a 

 beautiful collection, and in excellent preservation. The speci- 

 mens are attached to fine and strong paper, after the method now 

 common in England. In North American botany, the chief con- 

 tributors are Menzies, for the plants of California and the North 

 West Coast ; and Muhlenberg, Bigelow, Torrey, and Boott, for 

 those of the United States. Here also we find the cryptogamic 

 collections of Acharius, containing the authentic specimens des- 

 cribed in his works on the Lichens, and the magnificent East In- 

 dian herbarium of Wallich, presented some years since by the 

 East India Company. 



The collections preserved at the British Museum, are scarcely 

 inferior in importance to the Linna3an herbarium itself, in aiding 

 the determination of the species of Linnasus and other early 

 authors. Here we meet with the authentic herbarium of the 

 Hortus Clijfortianus, one of the earliest works of Linnsus, 

 which comprises some plants that are not to be found in his own 

 proper herbarium. Here also is the herbarium of Plukenet, 

 which consists of a great number of small specimens crowded, 

 without apparent order, upon the pages of a dozen large folio 

 volumes. With due attention, the originals of many figures in 

 the Almagestuni and Amaltheum Botanicum, &c., may be re- 

 cognized, and many Linn^an species thereby authenticated. 

 The herbarium of Sloane, also, is not without interest to the 

 North American botanist, since many plants described in the Voy- 

 age to Jamaica, ^c, and the Catalogue of the plants of Jamaica^ 

 were united by Linnasus, in almost every instance incorrectly, 

 with species peculiar to the United States and Canada. But still 

 more important is the herbarium of Clayton, from whose notes 

 and specimens Gronovius edited the Flora Vi?ginica* Many 

 Linntean species are founded on the plants here described, for 

 which this herbarium is alone authentic ; for Linnasus, as we 

 have already remarked, possessed very few of Clayton's plants. 



turn thither in the course of a year, that he may visit those mountains, and let me 

 know whether the same alpine plants are found there as in Europe." Who can 

 this American student have been? Kuhn did not visit Linnseus until more than 

 fifteen years after the date of this letter. 



'^ Flora Virginica, cxldheyis j)lantas quas J. Clai/toji m Virginia collegit. Ludg. 

 Bat. 8vo. 1743.— Ed. 2. 4to. 176.2. The first edition is cited in the Species Plan- 

 tarum of Limiceus; the second, again, quotes the specific phrases of Linnasus. 



