14 (fHarlg Botanical TOr iters. 



ble for its elegant prefentation of much that was new; and 

 it will always deferve honorable remembrance in the hif- 

 tory of our Flora. There are feveral paffages of it — as 

 at pp. 5 and 7, and in the account of the two baneberries 

 at p. 76, where we read, " Opacis et fylveftribus locis in 

 eadem Americas parte frequentiffimum eft geminum ge- 

 nus " — which look a little like a proper botanical collec- 

 tor's notes on his fpecimens; and thefe fpecimens, and the 

 others from the fame region, may well have been refults 

 of the herborizing of that worthy Francifcan miffionary, 

 whofe early obfervations on the natural hiftory of Canada 

 have been mentioned already above. Nor were the 

 North- American plants poffeffed by Cornuti entirely con- 

 fined to this region; for he fpeaks at the end (p. 214) of 

 his having received a root, ex notha Anglia, as he.fbrangely 

 calls it, known, it appears, by the name of Serpentaria, or, 

 in the vernacular, Snaqroel, — a fure remedy for the bite 

 of a huge and moft pernicious ferpent in notha Anglia, — 

 which was no doubt the fnake-root fo famous once as a 

 cure for the bite of a rattlefnake', and one of the numerous 

 varieties of Nabalus albus (L.) Hook., if not, as Purfh 

 fuppofed, what is now the var. Serpentaria, Gray. But 

 fome view of the fcantinefs of fcientific knowledge of our 

 Flora, near forty years after Cornuti, may be had by reck- 

 oning the number of fpecies for which Bauhin's " Pinax " 



took exception, was that of Lobel ; and farther, that the' catalogue — Enchiridium 

 Botanicum Parisiense — which is annexed to Cornuti's larger work, is in several 

 respects creditable to him. — Biog. Univ., in loco. 



