
          by our friend Curtis, (who by the bye informed me last spring
that he intended this very summer to make a lengthened
excursion through those very mountains) I fear that the Shortia 
galacifolia of Torr. & Gray, must still remain among the "plantae
incognitae" of the Michauxian Herbarium. I believe, however, 
that I have on former occasions expressed to you a very great
veneration for the excellent Frenchman who was almost the first
pioneer of American Botany; and it has been a source of no small
gratification to me to have been so fortunate as to find again
in my herborizations through Kentucky several of his plants
which having escaped the observation of other botanists they were
disposed to question the existence of. You must remember the unkind
insinuation which Nuttall, in his Genera, throws out in relation
to the Bellis integrifolia, that "no American botanist had
met with it since the days of Michaux!" When the truth is that
in some parts of Kentucky no plant whatever is more profusely
abundant. The same sort of questionable uncertainty, to a considerable
degree, seems also to have hung around his Pachysandra procumbens, 
Cunila glabella, Cardamine uniflora, and others, all of which I
have been so fortunate as to substantiate, and to distribute authentic
specimens of over Europe and America. For these reasons, among others, 
I feel solicitous that the plant refer'd to by Dr. Gray should be investigated
thoroughly even though it should not prove, as supposed by
De Caisne [Joseph Decaisne], to be un tres distinct genus. I will write immediately
in relation to Mr. Curtis; and I am sorry that Dr. Gray has
not given us from Michaux's herbarium, the precise habitat of it
among the Carolina mountains.

I became partially acquainted last spring with Mr. Daniel
Steinhauer
        