400 Mr. Cutler' s Account of indigenous Vegetables,

These natives were, likewise, possessed of the art of dyeingdeep and most permanent black, red and yellow colours. Thesecolours were given to bone, hörn, porcupine quills and otherhard substances, which still appear, unimpaired, on some of theirornaments and Utensils. The Spaniards are said to have procur-ed from the Californian Indians, the art of dyeing the best blackever yet kriown. The plant they employ in this dye is calledthe cascalote, a small shrub, which abounds in that country,and may probably be found within the limits of the UnitedStates.

However desirable the knowledge of our vegetable produc-tions may be, our progress must be slow, until men, versed inthis science, can devote their time to the investigation of them.Some advances may be made by individuals collecting the pro-ductions of their own neighbourhood, and transmitting accountsof them, from time to time, to the Academy. How much acorrespondence of this kind has done, in perfecting the historyof the British plants, will appear from the numerous botanicalpapers published in the transactions of the Royal Society.

As there has never been a description given of the indigenousplants in this part of the country, and it being one of the endsof the institution of this Academy to promote the knowledgeof natural history, I take the liberty of communicating an ac-count of some of those which have fallen under my Observation.They are arranged according to the Linncean system ; and thegeneric characters, where they were found to correspond, are re-ferred to Linnceus s description in the fifth edition of his GeneraPlantarum: The characters of the species, where there was anagreement, are taken from the tenth edition of the SystemaNaturce. A few synonyms from other authors are given, and

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