NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. 43 
The year 1826 was marked by the publication of the Compendium of the 
Flora of the Northern and Middle States, a —. so full, concise, and com- 
pact, that it was indeed acompendium. Probably some of those present 
can remember when this volume came to their relief, and the delight with 
which they turned to its brief diagnoses, after puzzling over the vague 
ks. 
December, 1826, our author read before the Lyceum, 
Some Account of a Collection of Plants made during a Journey to and from the 
ocky Mountains, in the Summer of 1820, by Edwin P. James, M. D., Assis- 
tant Surgeon U. S. Army. This paper was not published until 1828. It 7 
a memoir of some eighty pages, and enumerates 481 plants, many o 
Which were new species. This was, up to the date of its nanan sn 
author’s most important PRD to science, and is even now fre- 
quently refered = by the student of our Sma plants. ampai 
ecial interest, as it was am first Americun work of any impor- 
tance in sentir the arrangement was according to the Natural System. 
‘The only exception to this is a list by Abbé Correa, of those genera ap- 
pended to Muhlenburgh’s Catalogue, arranged according to the Natural 
Orders of Jussieu. A Catalogue of North American Genera of Plants, ar- 
ranged according to the Orders of Lindley’s Introduction to Botany, was pub- 
lished in 1831, both in a separate form, and as an appendix to an American 
nme m Lindley’s work. 
I 6, the Annals of the Lyceum are rich with the Monograph of the 
Cyperacee, and the volume for 1837 contained a memoir on New Genera 
and Species of Plants. 
The year 1838 saw the commencement of the Flora of North America, 
by John Torrey and Asa Gray, which was published in numbers and a 
intervals until the year 1843. The rich treasures lear in by our West- 
ern explorers SS the continuance of this work, and its authors 
directed their agross to plants from hitherto tae en fields. That 
elaborate sect in o large volumes, The Flora of the State of New 
York, by John Torey, was published in 1843, a year which began a re- 
markable era in Ameri botany. In that year commenced that magnifi- 
cent series of a acca to our Western Flora by Torrey. Gray, and 
others, which followed one another in rapid succession. Nicollet’s plants, 
published in his report in 1843, was the first of this almost continuous 
series of reports, of which I will mention only those wholly or in part by 
Dr. Torrey. That daring young lieutenant of the Topographical Engi- 
neers, now General Fremont, made two expeditions to the Rocky Moun- 
tains, the botanical results of which “sete i in 1845. The report of the 
plants collected by Emory followed in 1848. 
In the Smithsonian Contributions we find three memoirs by our author 
accepted in 1850, though they were not published until a year or two 
later. These were A Memoir on Batis, another on Darlingtonia, and 
Plante Fremont 
tane, 
collected by General Fremont in his memorable expedition to California. 
