62 
H. O. JUEL 
The Norsemen's discovery of America was almost forgotten 
later on, and it was 500 years later before the North American 
continent was visited again. J. Cabot, a Genoese like Columbus, 
but naturalized in England, wanted, just like Columbus, to find 
a western route to Asia and in 1497 he visited the eastern coast 
of North America, from Labrador to Virginia or Florida. This 
discovery does not seem to have led to any real colonization 
either, for the colonies on this coast date only from the begin¬ 
ning of the 17th century. Canada was then a French colony, 
to the south of this the coast was occupied by the two Eng¬ 
lish colonies of New England and Virginia, but between these 
two lay the Dutch New Belgium and the Swedish New Sweden 
(Nya Sverige). The latter only existed from 1638 to 1656, 
when it was taken by the Dutch, who in their turn had to give 
up their colony to the English in 1664. 
In the botanical literature of the 16th century one very 
seldom meets with mention of North American plants. Dodo- 
naeus in his Stirpium historise pemptades (1583, p. 846) has a 
good figure of Thuja occidentalis L. He calls it »arbor vitae» 
and says that in the time of Francis I (died 1547) it had been 
introduced from Canada into the royal garden at Blois. In 
Dalechamp’s Historia generalis plantarum (1587, p. 1754) there 
is a figure that can hardly represent anything else than a leaf 
of a Sarracenia , although he could say nothing of its origin. 
Clusius in his Rariorum stirpium historia (1601, p. 82) gives a 
figure of a plant that he had got from an apothecary in Paris, 
but he did not know from where the latter had got it. It is a 
cluster of basal leaves of Sarracenia purpurea L. 
C. Bauhinus may have been the first who had an opportu¬ 
nity to deal with a collection of dried plants from North America. 
It is well known that he had got many of the plants which he 
described in his Prodromus theatri botanici (1620) from J. Bur- 
serus. Burserus’ collection contained a dozen of plants which 
he had from an unknown apothecary in Paris, and eight of these 
are described in Bauhinus’ Prodromus. Specimens of all these are 
inserted in Burserus’ herbarium or Hortus siccus, now in the 
