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                           JOURNAL OF

     THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB


 Vol. 37.                  January, 1936.                  No. 433.


 DR. AARON YOUNG, JR. AND THE BOTANICAL SURVEY
                            OF MAINE
                        ARTHUR H. NORTON
                          (With Portrait)
   ON THE third day of July, 1847, John W. Dana, Governor of Maine
 approved a resolve appropriating the sum of six hundred dollars for
 a botanical survey of the State. Somewhat after midsummer the
 same year, Dr. Aaron Young Jr.,' was appointed State Botanist to
 carry out the provisions of the resolve.
   The report filed with the Governor by the State Botanist was not
published as a State document, a matter contributing to the cloud of
obscurity which has long enshrouded this transaction.
   Dr. Young and the persons whom he associated with himself in
the field work of the survey appear to have been among the first to
explore the whole length of Mount Katahdin from the north end to
Monument Peak, and first to publish accounts of their observations,
the first to show definitely that the summit of the mountain harbored
an extensive true alpine flora, the first to make a representative collec-
tion of the commoner plants of that flora2 and the first to apply dis-
  i At a meeting of the Maine Historical Society on February 27, 1913, Dr. James At
Spalding, biographer of the Maine Medical Association, read a biographical accoun.
of "Dr. Aaron Young Jr., Maine's first Botanist." A note from Dr. Spalding to the
present writer January 13, 1913 gives the following analysis of that article." "My
plan is a life [of Aaron Young] with intercurrent notices of his medical services. I
shall not expand on Ktaadn or on anything botanical, but leave that to you." The
writer of this paper would gratefully acknowledge the wise advice and the help of
Dr. Spalding in bringing to light the facts connected with the subject here presented.
Dr. Spalding's manuscript in the archives of the Maine Historical Society has not yet
been published.
  » In August 1845 Dr. Edward Everett Hale and Wm. Francis Channing made an
excursion to Katahdin by way of the North end; they ascended by Katahdin Stream,