AMERICAN MIDLAND NATURALIST. 189 
Rocky Mountain Botany. 
A GENERAL REVIEW. 
_ It is now just forty years since the present wri r 
his field studies of the vegetation of the seem Alois soe m 
lon, in what was then Colorado Territory. In April, 1870, 
there were no publie centers of botanical study, no libraries 
or herbaria, no resident students of the Rocky Mountain flora 
within the whole length and breadth of that land. There did 
not exist even the beginnings of any such thing as a local 
handbook of descriptive botany for the region, or for any part 
of it. To something like a comprehensive help to general 
plant study there, some approach was made a little later, in 
the Botany of Clarence King's Expedition, with its several 
very useful monographic supplements; but this book was not 
yet extant in 1870; and, until a much later date, the most 
ample library equipment for a student of Rocky Mountain 
botany could contain no books more serviceable than the two 
volumes of the unfinished Flora of North America, by Torrey 
and Gray, the botanical parts of several Pacific Railway Sur- 
vey Reports, and certain monographs of western families and 
genera by Torrey, by Engelmann, and by Asa Gray, including 
the last named author's list of Colorado plants of Parry, Hall 
o wherein a few new Colorado species had been 
escribed. 
In this year 1870 it was the opinion of the highest author- 
ity that by the copious gatherings of Parry, Hall and Harbour, 
the botanical field of the Colorado Rocky Mountains had been 
well night exhausted. I have a letter from Asa Gray, written 
to me while I was still in Colorado in 1871, which closes with 
this remark: “I hope you will find some new species; but 
you will be sharp if you do." Three years later than this, 
namely in the beginning of 1874, there came forth from the 
Government printing office in Washington as a part of the 
U. S. Geological Survey Report, a thick pamphlet entitled, “A 
Synopsis of the Flora of Colorado.” The author of this was 
Thomas C. Porter. The name of J. M. Coulter held a subordi- 
nate place on the title page; but every paragraph of original 
work was clai by Professor Porter as his own. To those 
who knew the man, no question will be raised as to his sole 
authorship of the book. The work itself was of value to 
ginners in Colorado botany, notwithstanding that for all 
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