40 
[ Rep. ^o. 564. ] 
miscaiTiage of letters to and from other gentlemen. The executor of Doc¬ 
tor Mitchill, (Doctor Akerly,) has promised the subscriber to select his 
correspondence as soon as possible. Some of his letters to the deceased 
have been published in the New York Farmer and Horticultural Reposi¬ 
tory, and the others will appear in the shape most agreeable to the rela¬ 
tives of that celebrated philosopher. The Annals of the Lyceum of Nat¬ 
ural History of this city, the pages of the Journal of Science of New 
Haven, and the numbers of the periodicals of agriculture and of medicine 
in various parts of the United States, it is believed, will ere long aflbrd a 
satisfactory reply to the resolution aforesaid of the Committee on Agri¬ 
culture. 
The Department is already apprized not only of the great obstacles to 
observation and inquiry in the consular district of the subscriber, but also 
of the almost insuperable impediments to the collection and transmission 
of plants, and of the time and labor which were wasted before he became 
convinced that it was absolutely necessary to depend only on his own 
eyes and his own hands in the acquisition of intelligence and the collec¬ 
tion of vegetables. Without roads or carriages in that country, not one 
attempt in a dozen was entirely successful in getting the plants from the 
interior to Campeachy. On their arrival, new difficulties occurred in pre¬ 
serving them from accidental and intentional injury. Then their trans¬ 
mission to the United States was impeded by the rarity of vessels sailing 
directly \o the Northern ports, and by the character of those which went 
to New Orleans, being mostly the property of Spaniards or Mexicans. 
Neglect, jealousy, or direct hostility, prevented their reaching their destined 
port, in -most instances; and in others, after their arrival in the United 
States, delays, carelessness, and accidents combined to let them perish. 
The agents of the subscriber in Sisal, Laguna, and Tabasco, not being 
animated by his ambition, seldom executed his orders effectually or in 
time. The internal dissensions of the Mexicans frequently added their 
embarrassments to the train of disappointments: in short, the compara¬ 
tive fruitlessness of all his labors to transmit tropical plants occasioned his 
letter to the Department of the 8th November last. The amount sacri¬ 
ficed in his profession alone, by his services and researches in obedience 
to the Treasury circular, is shown by the testimony of Doctor J ohnson, a 
personal acquaintance of General Root. The memorial of the subscriber, 
however, does not found his prayer for a^ grant of land on his past 
researches and services alone. It distinctly prays for it as an encourage¬ 
ment to his future services for the introduction and domestication of tropical 
plants. Unless he can offer land in the southern extremity of Florida for 
that purpose, he knows not how he can obtain associates in the enterprise. 
Texas is carrying off thousands of our agricultural citizens, by offering sitios 
of more than 4,000 acres to every family. The subscriber could not reason¬ 
ably expect that, under these circumstances, any settler would accept less 
than a section in Florida, burdened with the condition of cultivating a 
given quantity of tropical plants. 
If the territory south of 26° N. were surveyed and in market, he should 
not molest Congress with his memorial. If he could obtain even the 
pre-emption right to a sufficient number of sections to form a settlement 
of a hundred families, he would not ask for a tovrnship of land. He is 
now prepared to sail for Campeachy in fifteen days, with all the books, 
&c., requisite to make his future services more valuable. 
