1880.] Sketch of North American Ornithology in 1879. 25 
successive biographers, and Grosart, his latest and most enthusi- 
astic admirer, seemed to have told us all we were likely to learn 
of the man. It was, therefore, with peculiar pleasure that the 
present writer acquired, from Miss Malvina Lawson, daughter of 
Wilson’s famous engraver, an autograph letter of Wilson’s, which 
was found, on comparison with the documents in Ord’s “ Life,” 
and in Grosart, to have never been published correctly, or in full. 
It is that one which, dated Pittsburgh, February 22, 1810, gives 
an account of Wilson’s beat voyage down th® Ohio. It is 
printed verbatim, along with certain letters of George Ord’s and 
Prince Bonaparte’s, in the Penn Monthly for June, 1879. The 
writer also received, from the same source, an excellent drawing, 
never published, of the schoolhouse, near Gray’s Ferry, where 
Wilson taught; and which he would make over to any enter- 
prising publisher who would have it properly engraved. 
This slight sketch need not be left without allusion to the 
“sparrow literature” of the year—a curious mass of raw and not 
over-nice material, which will, nevertheless, be not without: its 
“ final cause,” if it contributes to the very desirable settlement of 
the vexed question of the European sparrow in America. 
:0: 
HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE SCIENCE OF BOTANY 
IN NORTH AMERICA FROM 1840 TO 1858. 
_ BY FREDERICK BRENDEL, 
[Continued from p. TU, Vol. XLII, American Naturalist. ] 
T the time when Torrey and Gray commenced their first work 
on the Flora of our continent north of Mexico, Sir William 
Jackson Hooker, the celebrated English botanist, had finished 
his great work on the Flora of British America, two volumes, in- 
quarto, with 238 plates, London, 1833-1840. But, before we pro- 
ceed farther, we have to review the early history of botany in the 
most northern and Arctic regions of North America. oe 
Hans Egede, a Danish missionary, was, from 1721 to 1736,in 
Greenland. After his return to Denmark, he published, in 1741 | 
a description of that country. He describes, vaguely, some 
plants, with some drawings on one plate, but it is rather difficultto _ 
make out what the drawings mean. Afterwards his son, P. Egede, 
made some botanical collections, which, as well as those of 
Gieseke, who published a Flora Greenlandica, 1816, in Brewster's 
Edinburg Encyclopædia, and those of Wormskiold, are preseran : 
in the herbaria of Hornemann and M. Vahl. 
