22 Hr. jUanaggrf) Cutler. 



ManafTeh Cutler, LL.D. (born 1743), was minifter of 

 the Hamlet in Ipfwich — afterwards incorporated as the 

 town of Hamilton — fifty-one years, and "was alfo a mem- 

 ber of the Medical Society of MafTachufetts. He is author 

 of " An Account of fome of the Vegetable Productions 

 naturally growing in this part of America, botanically 

 arranged," ■which makes nearly a hundred pages of the firft 

 volume of the Memoirs of the American Academy, 1785. 

 In the introduction to this paper, the author fpeaks oi 

 Canada and the Southern States having had attention 

 given to their productions, both by fome of their own 

 inhabitants and by European naturalifts; while "that ex- 

 tenfive tract of country which lies between them, includ- 

 ing feveral degrees of latitude, and exceedingly diverfified 

 in its furface and foil, feems flill to remain unexplored." 

 He attributes the negleCt, in part, to this, — " that botany 

 has never been taught in any of our colleges," but princi- 

 pally to the prevalent opinion of its unprofitableness in 

 common life. The latter error he combats with the then 

 important obfervation, that, " though all the medicinal 

 properties and economical ufes of plants are not discovera- 

 ble from thofe characters by which they are fyftematically 

 arranged, yet the celebrated Linnseus has found that the 

 virtues of plants may be, in a confiderable degree, and 

 moft fafely, determined by their nahiral characters: for 

 plants of the fame natural clafs are in some meafure fimi- 

 lar; thofe of the fame nahiral order have a ftill nearer 

 affinity; and thofe of the fame genus have very feldom 

 been found to differ in their medical virtues" (p. 397). 



