THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



139 



From the foregoing, it is clear that these plants are not hybrids 

 inasmuch as their seeds do not give plants of a hybrid char- 

 acter; they are truly chimeras. — From an article by D. M. Mot- 

 tier in School Science and Mathematics. 



BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN BOTANY 



HAT has been the history of our botanical development ? 

 It began with the explorers, usually foreigners, who 

 collected plants and sent them to Europe for identification and 

 description. Then came our native collectors, who finally began 

 to describe the plants they collected. These early workers were 

 interested chiefly in flowering plants but occasionally there was 

 an individual who- worked with the fungi or other groups. 

 Local natural history societies, in time, offered congenial atmos- 

 phere for the study of the local floras. Eventually governmental 

 aid was given to exploring expeditions. Usually those engaged 

 in botanical work were men who gained their livelihood from 

 some other profession, — doctors, ministers and even lawyers. 



There were a few institutions, however, that quite early had 

 professors who gave limited botanical instruction and carried on 

 investigations. Some idea of this early botanical work is given 

 by the following notes from five of our oldest educational 

 institutions, furnished the writer by their present botanical 

 heads. 



At Harvard, our oldest educational institution, William 

 Dandridge Peck was appointed Massachusetts Professor of 

 Natural History in 1805 and was the founder of the present 

 Gray Botanical Garden. He was both a zoologist and a botan- 

 ist and gave lectures in the university. Peck was succeeded in 

 1825 by Thomas Nuttall who was director of the botanical 

 garden and lecturer in natural history. Nuttall lived at the 

 Garden but evidently did not greatly relish his work as he 



