122 
He reported that he had in cultivation about 500 species, not 
counting seedlings, and that 254 species of living plants had been 
brought home by the expedition. During 1843 and 1844 the 
greenhouse was enlarged to at least three times its original size. 
The living plant collections remained here until 1850, when the 
erection of a new wing of the Patent Office necessitated their 
removal, and new conservatories were erected on the Mall, 
immediately in front of the Capitol. Brackenridge remained in 
charge of these new greenhouses as long as they remained under 
the supervision of Captain Wilkes; that is, until the summer of 
1854. 
The publication of the volumes containing reports of the re- 
sults of the expedition was planned on a magnificent scale, carried 
out in a desultory fashion, and seriously interrupted by the civil 
war. Finally, in 1876, although still far from completion, 
publication was definitely suspended; this was due chiefly to the 
reckless manner in which appropriations had been squandered, 
comparatively little of the money being used for the purpose 
for which it was intended. Each volume was issued by the 
government in an edition of 100 copies, sumptuously bound, 
and distributed gratuitously to the state libraries of each 
state of the Union and to the national libraries of certain 
foreign countries. No copies of this government edition were 
offered for sale to the public, but each author was permitted to 
have additional copies printed at his own expense, and to sell 
or give them away at his own discretion. 
Brackenridge was a good field-botanist, with the advantage of 
four years of intimate association during the voyage with the 
scholarly Pickering; and he was by no means illiterate. That he 
could write English clearly and fluently is proven by his letters 
still in existence. But he was not well versed in the technical 
forms of descriptive plant taxonomy, and his knowledge of 
Latin was very limited. The rules laid down for the monographs 
of the report series demanded that every description should be 
printed in both Latin and English, and Brackenridge appealed to 
Professor John Torrey, of Princeton, to help him out of his 
difficulty. Torrey revised much of the fern manuscript, supply- 
