No. 374.] MANASSEH CUTLER. 77 
thought of several experiments which I fancy may be well 
worth making, but cannot well proceed without a barometer. I 
have a prospect of getting a tube soon, which you have been so 
kind as to offer to fill with the mercury. The scale I can get 
made in Salem if I could procure a barometer for a pattern; but 
_ there is none in that town. ... If there is any gentleman of 
your acquaintance in Boston who has a barometer and makes 
little use of it, and would be so kind as to favor me with it 
until I can get one completed, I shall consider it as a very 
particular favor.” A few months later he wrote to the Corpora- 
tion of Harvard College for permission to take from the college 
library certain books which he had failed to procure in Europe, 
and which he had needed for the study of plants. 
On January 31, 1781, the American Academy of Arts and 
Sciences held its first meeting for the transaction of business. 
It then elected officers and chose some new members, among 
them Mr. Cutler. Two years later he was made a member of 
the Committee on Communications in Natural Philosophy and 
Natural History, his associates being Theophilus Parsons and 
Gen. Benjamin Lincoln. He was one of the first party which 
visited the White Mountains for scientific observations, in July, 
1784, and especially studied the plants of the region. Twenty 
years later he repeated the journey. In 1785 appeared the first 
volume of the Memoirs of the American Academy, which con- 
tains his chief published writing, “ An Account of Some of the 
Vegetable Productions Naturally Growing in this Part of Amer- 
ica, Botanically Arranged.” This was the first connected account 
of any part of the flora of any American region by a native 
writer. The plants were arranged, of course, according to the 
Linnzan system, and there were many discriminating notes 
concerning the uses and peculiarities of various species. In 
the same year he was elected a member of the American Philo- 
sophical Society of Philadelphia. In the third volume of the 
Memoirs of the American Academy is a figure with brief 
“Remarks on a Vegetable and Animal Insect.” This is an 
account of the larva of a stag beetle attacked by the C/avaria 
militaris of Linnzeus, a fungus now known as Cordyceps milt- 
taris. It shows a clear understanding of the relations between 
