22 
Br« l&anassefj Cutler. 
Manaffeh Cutler, LL.D. (born 1743), was minifter of 
the Hamlet in Ipfwich — afterwards incorporated as the 
town of Hamilton — fifty-one years, and was alfo a mem- 
ber of the Medical Society of Maifachufetts. He is author 
of "An Account of fome of the Vegetable Productions 
naturally growing in this part of America, botanically 
arranged," which makes nearly a hundred pages of the firft 
volume of the Memoirs of the American Academy, 1785. 
In the introduction to this paper, the author fpeaks of 
Canada and the Southern States having had attention 
given to their productions, both by fome of their own 
inhabitants and by European naturalifts; while "that ex- 
tenfive tract of country which lies between them, includ- 
ing feveral degrees of latitude, and exceedingly diverfified 
in its furface and foil, feems fbill to remain unexplored." 
He attributes the neglect, in part, to this, — "that botany 
has never been taught in any of our colleges," but princi- 
pally to the prevalent opinion of its unprofitableness in 
common life. The latter error he combats with the then 
important obfervation, that, " though all the medicinal 
properties and economical ufes of plants are not discovera- 
ble from thofe characters by which they are fyftematically 
arranged, yet the celebrated Linnaeus has found that the 
virtues of plants may be, in a confiderable degree, and 
molt fafely, determined by their natural characters: for 
plants of the fame natural clafs are in some meafure fimi- 
lar; thofe of the fame natural order have a ftill nearer 
affinity; and thofe of the fame genus have very feldom 
been found to differ in their medical virtues" (p. 397). 
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