NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 171 



and evening. The vegetable kingdom of our western country is uncommonly rich, and 

 luxuriantly abundant, because cultivation has been but partially extended to it. Hogs 

 have produced great destruction among all tuberose and bulbous plants. Even the laurel 

 tree of Carolina has become almost extinct in many parts of the country, owing to the de- 

 predations of domesticated animals. 



Although some plants, like some animals, are no longer seen in our country, yet the 

 field of botanical investigation is immeasurable and boundless. Our country embraces 

 every variety of soil and climate, mountains, rivers, lakes, and salt waters, and is the 

 favourite depositary of the vegetable riches of the earth. In the United States, we are 

 yet in the infancy of this science. 



The first edition of Linnaeus's Species Plantarum contains only 7,300 species. A 

 curious amateur of botany took the pains to enumerate the plants described in Dr. 

 Turton's translation of Gmelin's edition of the Systema Naturae, and in a work of Will- 

 denow, and found 2,046 genera, and 19,803 species of plants, of which 638 genera have 

 but one species ; 263 but two ; 174 but three ; and 124 but four. And it is supposed, 

 that the whole number of described plants amounts to about 22,000. 



Mr. Jacob Green has annexed to his well-written and interesting Address on the Bota- 

 ny of the United States, (delivered before the Society for the Promotion of Useful Arts,) 

 a Catalogue of plants indigenous to the state of New- York. This list, which Mr. Greeji 

 admits to be incomplete, contains about 403 genera, and 1,283 species. 



The Catalogue of the hitherto known native and naturalized plants of North America, 

 made by that indefatigable and learned botanist Dr. Muhlenberg, contains but 863 genera, 

 and not 2,800 species. It is not unreasonable to estimate the whole number of plants iu 

 the United States, and their territories, at 8,000 ; and as yet we have not described 

 3,000. What an opening does this -afford for the operations of scientific inquiry ? No 

 wonder that Linnaeus was so anxious to visit this country. Catesby, in his Hortus Euro- 

 pa? Americanus, published in 1767, truly observes, that a small spot of land in America 

 lias, within less than half a century, furnished England with a greater variety of trees, 

 thau has been procured from all the other parts of the world, for more than a thousand 

 years past. 



From information which has recently reached me, I am persuaded, that our Dutch an- 

 cestors paid more attention to the improvement and natural history of the country, than 

 lias been generally imagined. We are, as yet, greatly in the dark with respect to events 

 and observations during their occupancy of New Netherland, as they termed their coun- 

 try ; but the means of information are amply within our reach. De Laert wrote a book 

 respecting it, wherein he gives a very particular account of the Indians ; and Megapolen- 



