764 Historical Sketch of the Science of Botany [December, 
tions from many parties. Except the small collection of Lewis 
and Clark, he used the herbaria of J. Lyon and Barton in Phila- 
delphia, of Hosack in New York, of Le Conte in Georgia, of 
Peck in Massachusetts, and a number of species received from 
Alois Enslen, an Austrian gardener, who made large collections 
in the Southern States and Western territories, which are now in 
the Imperial Museum of Natural History in Vienna. 
Then, in England, Pursh examined the herbaria of Clayton, 
Pallas, Plukenet, Catesby and Walter. In Bank’s herbarium he 
found a number of the plants collected by Archibald Menzies on 
the North-west coast. 
Pursh returned to America with the intention to explore 
Canada, where he died in 1820. : 
C. C. Robin} a Frenchman, traveled, 1802-1806, in Louisiana 
and West Florida, which at that time included the southern parts 
of the States of Mississippi and Alabama. The incidents of his 
voyages he published in 1807, and in an appendix he described 
the plants, found on his tour, very vaguely, as he indeed was not 
a botanist. It is not known that he ever brought to France the 
specimens of those plants. From this written material was fab- 
ricated, by Rafinesque, a fancy work called Florula Ludoviciana, 
published in New York, 1817. 
Constantin Samuel Rafinesque-Schmaltz is his full name.. He 
was a Sicilian, and came to America in 1802, where he remained 
three years, and then again in 1815, and never returned, for he died 
in 1840, in this country. A. Gray published, in the American Jour- 
nal of Science and Arts, a paper on his numerous botanical writ- 
ings. Gray calls him an eccentric but certainly gifted man. It 
is true, some of his observations are really good, some of his me 
genera and species are acknowledged now and will be in the ee 
future, but the greater part are trash; most of his numerous 
species can never be found, for they have no real existence in 
nature. He was a polygrapher—he wrote on everything; even 
try, the worst of all, he committed. At last he made a perfect 
fool of himself; he had such a mania for classification and regis- 
- tration, that he once proposed—twelve new species of thunder 
and lightning! His travels extended, in 1802-4, over the States of 
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and Virginia; 1n _ 
a 1 Not the godfather of the genus Robinia. That was Jean Robin, who lived from 
to 1629, in Paris, . hae 
