Mr. John Josselyn, the writer of this book, was only brother, as
he says, to Henry Josselyn, Esq., many years of Black Point in
Scarborough, Me.; and both were sons to Sir Thomas Josselyn, Knt., of
Kent, whose name is at the head of the new charter obtained by Sir
Ferdinando Gorges for his Province in 1639, but who did not come to
this country. Mr. Henry Josselyn was at Piscataqua, in the interest
of Capt. John Mason, at least as early as 1634; but, in 1636, he is
one of the Council of Gorges’s Province in Maine, and continued in
that part of the country the rest of his life. He succeeded in 1643,
by the will of Capt. Thomas Cammock, to his patent at Black Point,
and soon after married his widow. He is afterwards Deputy-Governor of
the Province; and until 1676, when the Indians attacked and compelled
him to surrender his fort, he was, says Mr. Willis,—whose valuable
papers are cited below,—“one of the most active and influential
men in it;” holding, “during all the changes of proprietorship and
government, the most important offices.” He is then a magistrate
of the Duke of York’s Province of Cornwall, and, as late as 1680,
a resident of Pemaquid; when he is spoken of, in a letter of Gov.
Andros to the commander of the fort at Pemaquid, as one “whom I would
have you use with all fitting respect, considering what he hath been
and his age.” He is living in 1682; but had died before the 10th of
May, 1683,[1] leaving no descendants.[2]
Notwithstanding the evidence, above afforded, of the social position
of the family of which Henry and John Josselyn were members, the
present writer failed in tracing it, doubtless from not knowing
in which county it had its principal seat. In this uncertainty,
it occurred to him to make application to the eminent English
antiquary,—the Rev. Joseph Hunter, Vice-President of the Society
of Antiquaries of London,—to whom he was indebted for former kind
attentions; and was favored by this gentleman with such directions
as left nothing to be desired. “The Josslines,” writes Mr. Hunter
“(the name is written in some variety of orthographies, and now more
usually Joceline), are quite one of the old aristocratic families
of England, having several knights in the early generations; being
admitted into the order of baronets, and subsequently into the
peerage.... Their main settlement was in Hertfordshire, at or near
the town of Sabridgeworth; and accounts of them may be read in the
histories—of which Chauncy’s, Salmon’s, and Clutterbuck’s are the
chief—of that county. But a fuller and better account is to be found
in the ‘Peerage of Ireland,’ by Mr. Lodge, keeper of the records in
the Birmingham Tower, Dublin: 4 vols. 8vo, 1754.”[3]
According to Lodge, the family begins with a Sir Egidius, who passed
into England in the time of Edward the Confessor, and was descended
from “Carolus Magnus, King of France, with more certainty than the
houses of Lorraine and Guise.” Of this Sir Egidius was Sir Gilbert de
Jocelyn, who accompanied the Conqueror, and had Gilbert—called St.
Gilbert, being canonized by Pope Innocent III. in 1202—and Geoffry.
To this Geoffry is traced back John Jocelyn, living in 1226; who
married Catherine, second daughter and co-heir to Sir Thomas Battell,
and had Thomas, who married Maud, daughter and co-heiress of Sir John
Hide, of Hide Hall in Sabridgeworth, county of Hertford, Knt., by
his wife Elizabeth, daughter of John Sudeley; Baron Sudeley, in the
county of Gloucester. He had Thomas Jocelyn, Esq., who married Joan,
daughter of John Blunt, and had Ralph, who married Maud, daughter of
Sir John Sutton _alias_ Dudley, and had Geoffry of Hide Hall, 1312.
Geoffry married Margaret, daughter of Robert Rokell or Rochill, and
had Ralph, who married Margaret, daughter and heir to John Patmer,
Esq., and had Geoffry (died 1425), who married Catherine, daughter
and heir to Sir Thomas Bray, and had four sons and two daughters. Of
these, the eldest was Thomas Jocelyn, Esq., living in the reign of
Edward IV., who married Alice, daughter of Lewis Duke of Dukes in
Essex, Esq., by his wife Anne, daughter of John Cotton, Esq., and
had issue George, his heir, called Jocelyn the Courtier, who married
Maud, daughter and heir to Edmond Bardolph,—Lord Bardolph,—and had
one daughter and three sons. John Jocelyn, Esq.,—“auditor of the
augmentations, upon the dissolution of the abbeys by King Henry
VIII.,”—was son and heir to the last-mentioned George, and married
Philippa, daughter of William Bradbury, of Littlebury in Essex; by
whom he had Sir Thomas, of Hide Hall,—created a Knight of the Bath
at the coronation of King Edward VI.,—who married Dorothy, daughter
of Sir Geoffry Gales or Gates, Knt., and had issue;[4] one daughter
marrying Roger Harlakenden, of Carnarthen in Kent, Esq.; and the
fifth son being Henry Jocelyn, Esq., who married Anne, daughter
and heir to Humphrey Torrell, otherwise Tyrrell, of Torrell’s Hall
in Essex,—became seated there, and had six sons and six daughters.
The second son of this family was Sir Thomas Jocelyn (father to
our author), who was twice married. His first wife was Dorothy,
daughter of John Frank, Esq.; by whom he had six sons and five
daughters,—Torrell, born 28th May, 1690; Henry, and Henry, both
died infants; Thomas, who died without issue, in 1635, at Bergen op
Zoom; Edward, who, by a lady of Georgia, had a daughter Dorothy,
and died at Smyrna in 1648; Benjamin, born 19th May, 1602; Anne,
married to William Mildmay, Esq., by whom she had Robert, John,
Anne, and Elizabeth; Dorothy, married to John Brewster, Esq., and
left no issue; Elizabeth, married to Francis Neile, Esq., and had
Francis, John, and Mary; Frances, born 26th March, 1600, and married
Rev. Clement Vincent; and Mary, died unmarried. The second wife of
Sir Thomas Jocelyn was Theodora, daughter to Edmond Cooke, of Mount
Maschall in Kent, Esq.; and by her he had Henry, John, Theodora,
and Thomazine. Torrell, the eldest son, married, first, Elizabeth,
daughter of Sir Richard Brooke of Cheshire,—heir to her grandfather
(by the mother), Dr. Chaderton, Bishop of Lincoln,—by whom he had
a daughter, Theodora, married to Samuel Fortrie, Esq.,[5] to whom
our author dedicates the present volume, with acknowledgment of the
“bounty” of his “honored friend and kinsman.”
The principal line of the family was continued by Richard, heir
to Sir Thomas of Hide Hall; the said Richard being brother to our
author, John Josselyn’s grandfather. In 1665, Sir Robert Jocelyn of
Hide Hall was advanced to the dignity of baronet. The fifth son of
this Sir Robert was Thomas; whose son, Robert Jocelyn, Esq., was
bred to the law; was Solicitor-General and Attorney-General and Lord
High Chancellor of Ireland; and created, in 1743, Baron Newport of
Newport, and Viscount Jocelyn in 1755. Robert, son and successor of
this nobleman, was created, in 1771, Earl of Roden, of High Roding,
County of Tipperary; and was ancestor to the present Lord Roden.[6]
Our author, John Josselyn, made his first voyage to New England in
1638; arriving in Boston Harbor the 3d of July, and remaining with
his brother at Black Point till the 10th of October of the following
year. While at Boston, he paid his respects to the Governor and to
Mr. Cotton, being the bearer to the latter of some poetical pieces
from the poet Quarles; and, as he says, “being civilly treated by
all I had occasion to converse with.” In the account of his first
voyage, there is no appearance of that dislike to the Massachusetts
government and people which is observable in the narrative of the
second, and may there not unfairly be connected with his brother’s
political and religious differences with Massachusetts.[7] His second
voyage was made in 1663. He arrived at Nantasket the 27th of July,
and soon proceeded to his brother’s plantation, where he tells us he
staid eight years, and got together the matter of the book before us.
This was first printed in 1672, but occurs also with later dates. It
was followed, in 1674, by “An Account of Two Voyages to New England;
wherein you have the Setting-out of a ship, with the Charges; the
Prices of all Necessaries for furnishing a Planter and his Family
at his first Coming; a Description of the Country, Natives, and
Creatures; the Government of the Countrey as it is now possessed by
the English, &c. A large Chronological Table of the most Remarkable
Passages, from the first Discovering of the Continent of America to
the Year 1673.” 12mo, pp. 279. Reprinted in the third volume of the
Third Series of the Collections of the Historical Society; which
edition is quoted here. A large part of the “Voyages” is taken up
with observations relating to natural history; and it is quite likely
that the author tried in this second work to supply some of the
defects of his “Rarities.” Compare especially the accounts of beasts
of the earth, of birds, and of fishes; each of which is better done
in the “Voyages.”
Josselyn was, it appears, a man of polite reading. He quotes
Lucan, Pliny, and Du Bartas; he has Latin and Italian proverbs;
he is acquainted with the writings of Mr. Perkins, that famous
divine; with Van Helmont; with Sandys’s “Travels,” and Capt. John
Smith’s. His curiosity in picking up “excellent medecines” points
to an acquaintance with physic; of his practising which, there
occur, indeed (pp. 48, 58, 63), several instances.[8] Nor is he,
by any means, uninterested in prescriptions for the kitchen; as
see his elaborate _recipe_ for cooking eels (Voyages, p. 111), and
also that (_ibid._, p. 190) for a compound liquor “that exceeds
_passada_, the Nectar of the country;” which is made, he tells us,
of “Syder, Maligo-Raisons, Milk, and Syrup of Clove-Gilliflowers.”
But his curiosity in natural history, and especially in botany, is
his chief merit; and this now gives almost all the value that is
left to his books.[9] William Wood, the author of “New-England’s
Prospect” (London, 1634[10]), was a better observer, generally, than
Josselyn; but the latter makes up for his other short-comings by the
particularity of his botanical information.
The “Voyages” was Josselyn’s last appearance in print. He was already
advanced in years, and alludes to this at page 69 of the present
book, where he says he shall refer the further investigation of a
curious plant—of which a neighbor, “wandering in the woods to find
out his strayed cattle,” had brought him a fragment—“to those that
are younger, and better able to undergo the pains and trouble of
finding it out.” “Henceforth,” he declares in his “Voyages,” p. 151,
“you are to expect no more Relations from me. I am now return’d
into my Native Countrey; and, by the providence of the Almighty and
the bounty of my Royal Soveraigness, am disposed to a holy quiet of
study and meditation for the good of my soul; and being blessed with
a transmentitation or change of mind, and weaned from the world, may
take up for my word, _non est mortale quod opto_.”
We may suppose that a rude acquaintance with the more common or
important animals of a new country will commence with the discovery
of it. Thus the beginning of European knowledge of the marine animals
of America goes back, doubtless, to the earliest fisheries of
Newfoundland; and these began almost immediately after the discovery
of the continent. Game and peltry were also likely to come to the
knowledge of the earliest adventurers; and scattered among these,
from the first, were doubtless men capable of regarding the world
of new objects around them with an intelligent, if not a literate
eye. Descriptions in this way, and specimens, at length reached
Europe, and became known to the learned there—to Gesner, Clusius, and
Aldrovandus—from as early as the middle of the sixteenth century.
Without being naturalists, such observers as Heriot in Virginia
(1585-6) and Wood in Massachusetts (1634) could give valuable
accounts of what they saw; and more, it may well be, was due to the
Christian missionaries, who accompanied or followed the adventurers,
for the conversion of the heathen. Gabriel Sagard was one of these
missionaries, a _recollet_ or reformed Franciscan monk, who went from
Paris to Canada in 1624, and spent two years in the country of the
Hurons; publishing his “Grand Voyage du Pays des Hurons” in 1632, and
enlarging it in 1636 to “Histoire du Canada et Voyages que les Freres
Mineurs recollets y ont faits pour la Conversion des Infidelles,”
&c., in four books; of which the third treats of natural history,[11]
and is cited by Messrs. Audubon and Bachmann (Vivip. Quadrupeds of
N.A., _passim_) for a good part of our more common and noticeable
_Mammalia_. Something considerable thus got to be known of marine
animals of all sorts, and of quadrupeds. But it was much longer
before our birds—if we except a very few, as the blue-jay and the
turkey—came to the scientific knowledge of Europeans; and this remark
is, as might be expected, at least equally true of our reptiles.
Quite as accidental, doubtless, was the beginning of European
acquaintance with our plants. There are, indeed, traces of the
knowledge of a few at a very early period. Dalechamp, Clusius,
Lobel, and Alpinus—all authors of the sixteenth century—must be
cited occasionally in any complete synonymy of our _Flora_. The
Indian-corn, the side-saddle flower (_Sarracenia purpurea_ and _S.
flava_), the columbine, the common milk-weed (_Asclepias Cornuti_),
the everlasting (_Antennaria margaritacea_), and the _Arbor vitæ_,
were known to the just-mentioned botanists before 1600. _Sarracenia
flava_ was sent either from Virginia, or possibly from some Spanish
monk in Florida. Clusius’s figure of our well-known northern _S.
purpurea_—of which he gives, however, only the leaves and base
of the stem (_Clus. Hist. Pl._, _cit._ Gerard _a_ Johnson)—was
derived from a specimen furnished to him by one Mr. Claude Gonier,
apothecary at Paris, who himself had it from Lisbon; whither we
may suppose it was carried by some fisherman from the Newfoundland
coast. The evening primrose (_Œnothera biennis_) was known in Europe,
according to Linnæus, as early as 1614. _Polygonum sagittatum_ and
_arifolium_ (tear-thumb) were figured by De Laet, probably from
New-York specimens, in his “Novus Orbis,” 1633. Johnson’s edition of
Gerard’s “Herbal” (1636)—which was possibly our author’s manual in
the study of New-England plants—contains some dozen North-American
species, furnished often from the garden of Mr. John Tradescant, who
had other plants from “Virginia” beside the elegant one which bears
his name; and John Parkinson—whose “Theatrum Botanicum” (1640) is
declared by Tournefort to embrace a larger number of species than any
work which had gone before it—describes, especially from Cornuti, a
still larger number. But the first treatise especially concerned with
North-American plants was that of the French author just mentioned;
which, on several accounts, deserves particular attention.
John Robin—“second to none,” says Tournefort, “in the knowledge and
cultivation of plants”—was placed in charge of the Royal Botanical
Garden at Paris, about the year 1570; and Vespasian Robin, “a most
diligent botanist,” followed, in similar connection[12] with the
larger garden founded by Lewis the Thirteenth. Both are said to have
assisted the writer whose book we are to notice; but especially the
latter,[13] who, there is little doubt, deserves credit for all the
American species described in it.
The history of Canadian and other new plants—“Canadensium Plantarum,
aliarumque nondum editarum Historia” of Jacobus Cornuti, Doctor of
Medicine, of Paris—was printed in that city (pp. 238) in 1635, under
the patronage just mentioned; and contains accounts, accompanied,
in every case but one, with figures on copper, of thirty-seven
of our plants; of which the meadow-rue is known to botanists as
_Thalictrum Cornuti_; and the common milkweed, as _Asclepias
Cornuti_. Though himself not eminent as a botanist,[14] the work
of Cornuti was valuable for its elegant presentation of much that
was new; and it will always deserve honorable remembrance in the
history of our _Flora_. There are several passages of it—as at
pp. 5 and 7, and in the account of the two baneberries at p. 76,
where we read, “Opacis et sylvestribus locis in eadem Americæ parte
frequentissimum est geminum genus”—which look a little like a proper
botanical collector’s notes on his specimens; and these specimens,
and the others from the same region, may well have been results of
the herborizing of that worthy Franciscan missionary, whose early
observations on the natural history of Canada have been mentioned
already above. Nor were the North-American plants possessed by
Cornuti entirely confined to this region; for he speaks at the end
(p. 214) of his having received a root, _ex notha Anglia_, as he
strangely calls it, known, it appears, by the name of _Serpentaria_,
or, in the vernacular, _Snaqroel_,—a sure remedy for the bite of
a huge and most pernicious serpent _in notha Anglia_,—which was
no doubt the snake-root so famous once as a cure for the bite
of a rattlesnake, and one of the numerous varieties of _Nabalus
albus_ (L.) Hook., if not, as Pursh supposed, what is now the _var.
Serpentaria_, Gray. But some view of the scantiness of scientific
knowledge of our _Flora_, near forty years after Cornuti, may be had
by reckoning the number of species for which Bauhin’s “Pinax” and
“Prodromus” (1671) are cited by Linnæus in the “Species Plantarum.”
Most of them are Southern plants; and the few decidedly Northern
ones which meet us—as _Cornus canadensis_, _Uvularia perfoliata_,
_Trillium erectum_, _Arum triphyllum_, and _Adiantum pedatum_—are all
indicated, by Bauhin’s phrase, as from Brazil!
We have nothing illustrating the _Flora_ of New England from Cornuti
till Josselyn. In Virginia, Mr. John Banister, a correspondent of
Ray’s, began to botanize probably not long after the middle of the
seventeenth century. He was succeeded by several eminent names; as
Mark Catesby, F.R.S. (born 1679), John Clayton, Esq. (born 1685), and
John Mitchell, M.D., F.R.S.,—a contemporary of the other two,—who
together gave to the botany of Virginia a distinguished lustre; as
did Cadwalader Colden, Esq. (born 1688),—a selection from whose
correspondence has been lately edited by Dr. Gray,—to that of New
York; John Bartram (born 1701), “American botanist to his Britannic
Majesty,” to that of Pennsylvania; and, somewhat later, Alexander
Garden, M.D., F.R.S. (born 1728), to that of South Carolina.
Josselyn himself is, indeed, little more than a herbalist; but it
is enough that he gets beyond that entirely unscientific character.
He certainly botanized, and made botanical use of Gerard and his
other authorities. The credit belongs to him of indicating several
genera as new which were so, and peculiar to the American _Flora_.
It may at least be said, that, at the time he wrote, there is no
reason to suppose that any other person knew as much as he did of
the botany of New England. “The plants in New England,” he says in
his “Voyages,” p. 59, “for the variety, number, beauty, and virtues,
may stand in competition with the plants of any countrey in Europe.
Johnson hath added to Gerard’s ‘Herbal’ three hundred, and Parkinson
mentioneth many more. Had they been in New England, they might have
found a thousand, at least, never heard of nor seen by any Englishman
before.”[15] Nor did our author fail to adorn his “Rarities” with
recognizable figures, as well as descriptions, of some of these
new American plants; and his arrangement is also creditable to
his botanical knowledge. By this arrangement, his collections are
distinguished into—
1. “Such plants as are common with us in England.”
2. “Such plants as are proper to the country.”
3. “Such plants as are proper to the country, and have no name.”
4. “Such plants as have sprung up since the English planted and kept
cattle in New England.”
The last of these divisions is the most valuable part of Josselyn’s
account, as it affords the only testimony that there is to the first
notice among us of a number of now naturalized weeds, which it is an
interesting question to separate from the more important class of
plants truly indigenous in, and common to, both hemispheres; and the
author’s treatment of the latter—as indeed of the other two lists
mentioned above—shows that he was competent, in a measure, to reckon
the former. This furnishes a date, and an early one; and there is
no other till 1785, when Dr. Manasseh Cutler’s Memoir, to be spoken
of, enables us to limit the appearance of some other species not
mentioned by Josselyn.
There is no work of any size or importance on New-England plants,
after Josselyn, for the whole century which followed. We were not,
indeed, without men in distinguished connection with the European
scientific world. The most eminent New-England family gained honors
in science, as well as in the conduct of affairs. John Winthrop the
younger, eldest son of the first Governor of Massachusetts,—and the
“heir,” says Savage, “of all his father’s talents, prudence, and
virtues, with a superior share of human learning,”[16]—was himself
the first Governor of Connecticut, and had, in this connection, a
certain scientific position and reputation. “The great Mr. Boyle,
Bishop Wilkins, with several other learned men,” says Dr. Eliot, “had
proposed to leave England, and establish a society for promoting
natural knowledge in the new colony of which Mr. Winthrop, their
intimate friend and associate, was appointed Governor. Such men were
too valuable to lose from Great Britain; and, Charles II. having
taken them under his protection, the society was there established,
and obtained the title of the Royal Society of London.... Mr.
Winthrop sent over many specimens of the productions of this country,
with his remarks upon them: ‘and, by an order of the Royal Society,
he was in a particular manner invited to take upon himself the charge
of being the chief correspondent in the West, as Sir Philiberto
Vernatti was in the East Indies.’ ‘His name,’ says the same writer,
Dr. Cromwell Mortimer, Secretary of the Royal Society, in his
flattering dedication of the fortieth volume of the Philosophical
Transactions to the Governor’s grandson, ‘had he put it to his
writings, would have been as universally known as the Boyles’s, the
Wilkins’s, and Oldenburghs’, and been handed down to us with similar
applause.’”[17] There is, in the volume of Philosophical Transactions
for 1670, “An Extract of a Letter written by John Winthrop, Esq.,
Governor of Connecticut in New England, to the Publisher, concerning
some Natural Curiosities of those Parts; especially a very strange
and curiously-contrived Fish, sent for the Repository of the Royal
Society” (pp. 3); in which are mentioned, as sent, specimens of
scrub-oak; “bark of tree with fir-balsam, which grows in Nova Scotia,
and, as I hear, in the more easterly part of New England;” pods of
milk-weed, “used to stuff pillows and cushions;” and “a branch of the
tree called the cotton-tree, bearing a kind of down, which also is
not fit to spin.”
Fitz John Winthrop, Esq., F.R.S. (died 1707), son of the last, and
also Governor of Connecticut, is said to have been “famous for
his philosophical” (that is, scientific) “knowledge.”[18] And the
second Governor’s nephew, John Winthrop, Esq., F.R.S. (died 1747),
who left this country and passed the latter part of his life in
England, is declared by the author of the dedication already above
cited, to have “increased the riches of their” (the Royal Society’s)
“repository with more than six hundred curious specimens, chiefly in
the mineral kingdom; accompanied with an accurate account of each
particular.” “Since Mr. Colwell,” it is added, “the founder of the
Museum of the Royal Society, you have been the benefactor who has
given the most numerous collection.” Dr. John Winthrop, F.R.S. (died
1779), Hollisian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, N.E., whose
important papers on astronomical and other related phenomena are to
be found in the Philosophical Transactions, was of another line of
the same family.
Paul Dudley, Esq., F.R.S. (born 1675), son of Gov. Joseph Dudley,
and himself Chief Justice of Massachusetts, was author of several
papers in the Philosophical Transactions; one of which is an
“Account of the Poison-wood Tree in New-England” (vol. xxxi. p.
135); and another, “Observations on some Plants in New-England, with
Remarkable Instances of the Nature and Power of Vegetation” (vol.
xxxiii. p. 129). This last is of only seven pages, and of little
scientific account: though we learn from it, that, in 1726, when Mr.
Dudley wrote, the Pearmain, Kentish Pippin, and Golden Russetin,
were esteemed apples here, and the Orange and Bergamot cultivated
pears;[19] that, in one town in 1721, they made three thousand, and
in another near ten thousand barrels of cider; and that, to speak of
“trees of the wood,” he knew of a button-wood tree which measured
nine yards in girth, and made twenty-two cords of wood; and of an
ash, which, at a yard from the ground, was fourteen feet eight inches
in girth. He also expresses an intention to treat separately the
evergreens of New England; and this treatise, which was possibly more
valuable than the one just noticed, was in the possession of Peter
Collinson, the eminent patron of horticulture, and was given by him
to J. F. Gronovius; but has not, that I am aware of, appeared in
print.[20]
It is likely that the early physicians of New England gave special
attention to those simples of the country, the virtues of which
were known to the savages; and perhaps it was partly in this way
that the Rev. Jared Eliot (born 1685), minister of Killingworth in
Connecticut,—who is called by Dr. Allen “the first physician of his
day,”—is also designated, both by him and by Eliot, a botanist; and
by the latter, “the first in New England.” There is no doubt he was a
friend of Dr. Franklin’s, and a scientific agriculturist according to
the knowledge of his day; and he is said to have introduced the white
mulberry into Connecticut.[21] His Agricultural Essays went through
more than one edition, but is now rare. Mr. Eliot died while our next
character, the first native New-England botanist who deserves the
name, was a student of Yale College.
Manasseh Cutler, LL.D. (born 1743), was minister of the Hamlet in
Ipswich—afterwards incorporated as the town of Hamilton—fifty-one
years, and was also a member of the Medical Society of Massachusetts.
He is author of “An Account of some of the Vegetable Productions
naturally growing in this part of America, botanically arranged,”
which makes nearly a hundred pages of the first volume of the
Memoirs of the American Academy, 1785. In the introduction to this
paper, the author speaks of Canada and the Southern States having
had attention given to their productions, both by some of their own
inhabitants and by European naturalists; while “that extensive tract
of country which lies between them, including several degrees of
latitude, and exceedingly diversified in its surface and soil, seems
still to remain unexplored.” He attributes the neglect, in part, to
this,—“that botany has never been taught in any of our colleges,”
but principally to the prevalent opinion of its unprofitableness in
common life. The latter error he combats with the then important
observation, that, “though all the medicinal properties and
economical uses of plants are not discoverable from those characters
by which they are systematically arranged, yet the celebrated Linnæus
has found that the virtues of plants may be, in a considerable
degree, and most safely, determined by their _natural_ characters:
for plants of the same _natural_ class are in some measure similar;
those of the same _natural_ order have a still nearer affinity;
and those of the fame genus have very seldom been found to differ
in their medical virtues” (p. 397). This shows, perhaps, that Dr.
Cutler appreciated (for the _Italics_ in the just-quoted passage are
his own) that adumbration of a natural system which was afforded or
suggested by the artificial; and his instances—the _Gramineæ_, the
_Borraginaceæ_, the _Umbelliferæ_, the _Labiatæ_, the _Cruciferæ_,
the _Malvaceæ_, the _Compositæ_, &c.; though these are cited under
the divisions, not of the natural, but of the sexual system—are still
more to the point. There are other observations of interest; and the
suggestion is made, that persons should collect the plants of their
districts, and send them from time to time to the Academy.
Dr. Cutler was thus, possibly, the first to suggest a botanical
chair in our colleges, and a general _herbarium_ to illustrate the
_Flora_ of New England; and perhaps it was this last which led him
to propose a still more important undertaking. “It has long been my
intention,” he says in a letter to Prof. Swartz, of Upsal, dated 15th
October, 1802, “to publish a botanical work, comprising the plants
of the northern and eastern States; and [I] have been collecting
materials for that purpose. But numerous avocations, and a variety
of other engagements, has occasioned delay. It is, however, still my
intention, if my health permits, to do it. But, at this time, far
less than in years past, there is very little encouragement given
here to publications of this kind.”[22]
About three hundred and seventy plants are indicated in the published
“Account” of Dr. Cutler. It was not to be expected, that, in
this beginning, numerous mistakes should not be made. It could
not possibly have been otherwise. There is still evidence enough
of the author’s genius, which perhaps needed only opportunity and
encouragement to anticipate a part of what botany now owes to a
Nuttall, a Torrey, and a Gray. The “Account” was favorably received
by other botanists of the time, both in this country and abroad.
In a letter of Muhlenberg to Cutler, dated 9th February, 1791, the
former says, “Not till a few months ago, I was favored with the first
volume of the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
printed at Boston, 1785. Amongst other valuable pieces, I found your
‘Account of Indigenous Vegetables, botanically arranged;’ with which
I was infinitely pleased, as this was the first work that gives a
systematical account of New-England plants. Being a great friend
to botany, and having studied it in my leisure-hours upwards of
fourteen years in Pennsylvania, I know the difficulty of arranging
the American plants according to the Linnæan system; and I was always
eager to hear of some gentleman engaged in similar researches, that,
by joining hands, we might do something towards enlarging American
Botany.... This is the reason why I intrude upon your leisure-hours,
and crave for your acquaintance and friendship.”[23] Drs. Withering
and Stokes, of England, were other correspondents of Cutler, and
furnished him with important observations upon his printed Memoir,
besides specimens; as did also Swartz, and, it appears, Payshull
of Sweden. Dr. Stokes followed up his various suggestions for the
improvement of the Memoir, by proposing to dedicate a plant, which
he took to be new, to its author. “A plant,” he says, “like a woolly
heath, and which I wished to call _Cutleria ericoides_, turns out to
be _Hudsonia ericoides_. I hope, however, your herborizations may
furnish a new genus for you, not likely to be disturbed.”—_Letters of
Stokes to Cutler_, from “Feb. 14 ’91, to Aug. 17, ’93.”[24]
But Dr. Cutler’s printed memoir on the plants of New England is much
surpassed in interest by his manuscript volumes of descriptions,
still extant. These manuscript volumes commence with “Book I., 1783,”
and continue, so far as I have seen them, to 1804. The late Mr. Oakes
possessed six of these books; and two were given to me by my valued
friend, the late Dr. T. W. Harris. They are generally entitled,
“Descriptions and Notes on American Indigenous Plants,” and contain
a vast number of observations and analyses, sometimes accompanied by
pen-and-ink sketches. This was evidently the material accumulated for
the author’s _Flora_ above mentioned; and the following extracts will
serve to show that he was in many respects qualified to undertake
such a work. Thus, in describing the several hickories, he points
out those differences from _Juglans_, upon which Nuttall afterwards
constituted his genus _Carya_. Again, in the same volume,—that for
1789,—there is a _N. Gen. Anonymos_, minutely described in several
pages, which is no other than _Thesium umbellatum_, L., afterwards
distinguished by Nuttall as his genus _Comandra_. Again, under
_Anonymos, Yellow-Sandbind_, there is a full description of what
Nuttall after named _Hudsonia tomentosa_. The same volume shows
that the author had anticipated Prof. Gray in referring _Orchis
fimbriata_, as it was called by Pursh and other botanists, to
_O. psychodes_, L.; and the remark is also made that _O. lacera_
Michx.,—which Muhlenberg and our other writers had mistakenly
referred to _O. psychodes_, till Dr. Gray corrected the error,—“must
be a new species,” which it then certainly was. Again, there is
another _Anomolos_ described at length, which is the same afterwards
constituted by Nuttall his genus _Microstylis_. So _Campanula humida_
(Cutler mss.) is what Pursh designated, long after, _C. aparinoides_.
Again, in another volume (for 1800), he anticipates Pursh by
proposing for our water-shield the name _Brasenia ovalifolia_; and,
in yet another, he is before Bigelow in describing as a new species
what the latter, many years later, published as _Prunus obovata_.
This may suffice to indicate the merits of the botanist of Ipswich
Hamlet. A little shrub-willow, with clean, shining leaves, and modest
catkins,—inhabiting, almost everywhere, the alpine regions of the
White Mountains, and gathered by him there, before any other botanist
had penetrated those solitudes,—still reminds us of his name, which
deserves to be remembered by his countrymen.
After Cutler, there appeared nothing of importance[25] on our botany,
till the present elder school of New-England botanists—a school
characterized by the names of an Oakes, a Boott, and an Emerson—was
founded, now more than forty years ago, by the classical _Florula_ of
Bigelow.
[Illustration: (decorative icon)]
_New-Englands_