Vol. 35, pp. 63-72 March 20, 1922 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON MUHLENBERG ON PLANTS COLLECTED IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA REGION ABOUT 1809. BY W. L. McATEE. In the year 1809 no list of plants of the District of Columbia region had yet been published, nor, so far as we know, had any society been organized for the study of plants. Data on plant collections of that period are of considerable value, therefore, and it is of interest to know that at least three amateurs were collecting here at that day and sending their plants to the lead-ing American botanist of the time, Dr. Henry Muhlenberg.i These facts appear from a letter^ of Muhlenberg's addressed to "Dr. John Ott, at Georgetown, Columbia D., " the botanical matter in which is as follows : Lancaster, Sept. 25, 1809. Dear Sir: I am ever so much obliged to you for this magnificent package of plants and also to the other gentlemen who have contributed to it. I was very glad indeed, and all my wishes have been satisfied. I was short of some plants which Clayton described in his excellent Flora Virginica. Some of them I found in the present collection, and if you continue in this way I am in hopes to have them all in the end. The section around Columbia is par-ticularly rich in rare plants. I regret that the plants have not been pro-vided with numbers. By enumerating them the correspondence regarding the same is very much facilitated. The nomenclature is clearer and the fixing of new and unknown plants will be more intelligible. I have been looking them all over, but only superficially. When I put them into my herbarium I shall make a thorough examination of the same. I shall specify below the nomenclature just the same way as I have put it into my diary according to my first examination. Such as are new to me and of which I am not sure I have marked with a cross. ^ Of these I would like iThis is the form of his name on the title page of his pioneer Catalogus Plantarutn Americae Septentrionalis, 1813, and probably should be adopted as the well considered preference of his mature years rather than the baptismal name of Gotthilf Heinrich Ernst given in encyclopedias and the like. 2The body of this letter is in German script which was translated for me, very obligingly, by Dr. Carlo Zeimet of the U. S. Bureau of Entomology. The letter, in my possession, was purchased through a book-dealer, from an autograph collection marketed in Philadelphia. sAsterisks have been substituted. 14— Proc. Biol. See. Wash., Vol. 35, 1922. (63)
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