No. 1. 
To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States in 
Congress assembled: 
The memorial of Henry Perrine, doctor of medicine, and American con¬ 
sul for Campeachy and the adjacent ports in Mexico, respectfully shew- 
eth : 
That your memorialist is a native American citizen, whose official dis¬ 
trict, including the peninsula of Yucatan and State of Tabasco, embraces 
a section of the Mexican territory which is the most prolific in tropical 
vegetables of great value to agriculture, manufactures, and commerce. 
That, by the circular of the Treasury Department of the 6th September, 
1827, your memorialist was officially invoked to aid the desires of the 
General Government to introduce, into the United States all such foreign 
trees and “plants, of whatever nature, as may give promise, under proper 
cultivation, of flourishing and becoming useful.’’ 
That, in obedience to said circular, the time, labor, and funds of your 
memorialist were thenceforward devoted to observation and inquiry, amid 
the difficulties and the dangers incident to the nature of the climate and 
the face of the country, and the jealousies and the restrictions interposed 
by the character of the inhabitants and the despotism of the authorities. 
That, fortunately, the profession of your memorialist afforded him the 
only means of purchasing favor among all ranks of a semi-barbarous peo¬ 
ple ; and that, hence, a gratuitous and politic distribution of his medical 
services enabled him to conquer the otherwise insuperable obstacles to 
the progress of every inquiring foreigner, so far as to acquire much use¬ 
ful intelligence, not obtainable in any other way, concerning various val¬ 
uable plants which may be successfully domesticated in the United States. 
That, as a necessary consequence of thus discharging this governmental 
task, your memorialist was obliged to sacrifice all opportunities of ma¬ 
king money either by professional or mercantile pursuits, which, in the 
same period and region, have furnished fortunes to his unofficial country¬ 
men ; and as funds were not appropriated by Government to promote the 
objects of its circular, and as the perquisites of his consulate did not defray 
one-third of his personal expenses, his unaided individual labors have 
hitherto been of comparatively little practical utility to his country, in con¬ 
sequence of the difficulties, disappointments, and expenses connected with 
the collection and transmission of living vegetables. 
That, hence, when your memorialist became hopeless of the General 
Government’s engaging directly in the important enterprise of domestica¬ 
ting tropical plants in the United States, he, in a letter to the Secretary of 
the Treasury of the 8th November last, respectfully suggested the pro¬ 
priety of forming an incorporated company in Florida for that purpose ; 
that, hence, the Governor of that Territory, in his message to the Legisla¬ 
tive Council of the 2d ultimo, recommended an act of incorporation for 
your memorialist and his associates ; and that on the-ult., the Trop¬ 
ical Plant Company was instituted by a law, which names both associates 
and trustees among the most distinguished residents of that peninsula. 
That your memorialist now most respectfully asks of Congress a town¬ 
ship of land in the southern extremity of East Florida, which can never 
be of any value either to Government or to your meniorialist, without pre¬ 
vious heavy expenditures in improvements either upon or around it, but 
