University of Virginia Library

Barton's proposed work

To this we should add about 160,000 words in the Clark-Voorhis
collection, later to be described, and undoubtedly at

one time in Biddle's hands; and whatever additional notes he
may himself have made during conversations with Clark and
Shannon, or as the result of correspondence with the former
— and they must have been copious. A large proportion of
the scientific matter of the Lewis and Clark note-books, howover,
which may have aggregated a fourth of the journals as a
whole, had at the outset been eliminated by Clark and Biddle.
This material, carefully copied out, was sent to Dr. Benjamin
Smith Barton, an eminent naturalist in Philadelphia.[42]
Dr. Barton agreed to edit a special volume,"which
was to have been (by contract) prepared in six months
from the time" of the appearance of the narrative of the
journey. Owning to Barton's illness and consequent death, this
"cientific part"[43] was not written. Thus, while the Biddle
narrative gives a popular account of some of the principal discoveries,
the scientific data so laboriously kept by Lewis and Clark,
chiefly the former, has not heretofore been published.