264 Dr. Jacob Bigelow. 
poem not long after. At about the same time, however, he — 
gave a course of popular botanical lectures in Boston, in connec- — 
tion with Professor Peck, who must have been installed as — 
Natural History professor at Cambridge while Dr. Bigelow was — 
a medical student. The latter possessed the gift of exposition 
which Dr. Peck lacked ; and it naturally came to pass that Dr. — 
Bigelow repeated this course of lectures alone for a year or two © 
afterward. : 
In the spring of 1814 he brought out the first edition of his — 
Florula Bostoniensis, the book which, mainly in its second edi- | 
tion, has been the manual for New England herborization 
own to a recent day, or rather to a day which seems to us 
recent. The original volume, of 268 octavo pages, describes — 
the plants which “have been collected during the two last — 
seasons in the vicinity of Boston, within a circuit of from five 
to ten miles,” exceeding those limits only in the case of Magno- 
lia (from Manchester) and one or two more remarkable plants. 
We know of uo other Flora of the kind which was prepared so 
quickly and so well. The characters are short diagnoses, and 
in good part compiled. But the descriptive matter must have 
‘been original ; and it shows that aptitude for seizing the best 
points of character or most available distinctions, and of indi- 
cating them in few and clear words, which has made this 
manual so deservedly popular. Similar merits distinguish, on 
tion of Sir James Edward Smith’s Introduction to Botany; 
and his botanical knowledge, along with that of the materia 
medica génerally and his classical scholarship, placed him at 
the head, or at the laboring oar, of the committee which in 182! 
formed the American Pharmacopeeia. The writer used this 
volume in his medical-student days, and remembers dimly how 
the account of minor preparations, coming down to jams and 
conserves, ended with the classical ‘Jam satis est mibi.” 
he second edition of the Florula Bostoniensis, published in 
1824, while retaining its modest title, was nearly doubled in 
size and in the number of plants contained, the whole area of 
New England being included; and it became the Manual of 
Botany for the region. What a popular and satisfactory work 
it was, especially to hundreds of amateur botanists, some still 
living may testify. The third and last edition, issued in 1840, 
was a reprint, with various additions and corrections, furnished 
mainly by those who had learned their botany from the preced- 
ing one. This is the last Flora or Manual of this and perbaps 
