2Br. JHanasisdj Cutler. 
27 
After Cutler, there appeared nothing of importance 1 on 
our botany, till the prefent elder fchool of New-England 
botanifts — a fchool characterized by the names of an 
Oakes, a Boott, and an Emerfon — was founded, now more 
than forty years ago, by the claffical Flortila of Bigelow. 
1 The late Dr. Waterhouse, Professor of Medicine at Cambridge, read lectures 
on Natural History to his classes as early as 1788, and published the botanical 
part of these lectures in the Monthly Anthology, 1804-8; reprinting this in 1811, 
with the title of the Botanist (Boston, 8vo, pp. 228). In the preface to this vol- 
ume, the author's are claimed to have been the first public ledtures on Natural 
History given in the United States. The Massachusetts Professorship of Botany 
and Entomology was founded in 1805, and the Botanical Garden in 1807; but the 
eminent naturalist who first filled the chair left little behind him to bear witness 
to his acknowledged "learning and genius." — Quincy, Hist. Harv. Univ., vol. ii. 
p. 330. The studies of Peck were not, however, confined to the Fauna and 
Flora of New England; and his distinguished successors in the ledture-room 
and the botanical garden — Mr. Nuttall, the late Dr. Harris, and Professor Gray 
— ma}' be said to have maintained a like general, rather than local character, in 
the entomological and botanical investigations pursued at the University. 
