THE FLORA OF NORTH AMERICA. 17 
with the Linnzan and Banksian herbaria there. During his stay 
he was offered another position, viz., to go to India as physician 
of the East India Company; but he declined, having decided to 
serve his own native country. His collections were very rich, and 
his Flora Indix -Occidentalis, the ultimate result of his travels 
and labor, is the foundation of our knowledge of the flora of the 
West Indies. It contains the descriptions of 892 species of plants. 
Of these 723 were new to science. 
After his return to Sweden, Swartz continued his botanical 
explorations in different parts of Sweden. In 1802 he was called 
to become the successor of Prof. Lepechin as director of the Royal 
Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg, but again he declined. He 
was appointed director of the Royal Academy at Stockholm in 
1807, made a knight of the Order of Vasa in 1908, and professor 
of the Royal Carolinian Medico-Chirurgic Institute at Stockholm 
in 1814. He died the 19th of September, 1818. 
Swartz’s knowledge of American plants, however, was not 
limited to his own collections. While in England, he studied the 
collections found in the herbaria of Sloane, Plukenet, Petiver, and 
Banks. He corresponded freely with such men as Schreber, Willde- 
now, Schreder, Persoon, Mohr, Hooker, and Fischer, the promi- 
nent botanists of his time. He received from Rev. Muhlenberg in 
Pennsylvania a fine collection of American plants collected in 
1710 and 1711. From these he described six new species of 
mosses. 
In 1817 Rev. Forstrém, then residing on the island St. Bar- 
tholomew, sent him a large collection of Antillian plants. These 
furnished the material for his “Flora Bartholomensis et Guada- 
loupensis’’, containing 34 new species. 
He was an acknowledged authority on ferns, mosses, and 
lichens. He was the father of fern-knowledge; his Synopsis Fulicum 
made a revolution in that science. He was one of the first to 
adopt and apply the system of genera and species of mosses by 
Hedwig, the father of bryclogy, and he knew almost as much about 
lichens as his friend Acharius. In his books on these three classes 
of plants are found numerous descriptions of North American 
plants. 
The following publications from Schwartz’s pen refer wholly 
or partly to North American plants: 
