124 APPENDIX. 



plants in the fifth and succeeding volumes of the ' Linnsea,' also possessed a good set at 

 Halle. Schiede himself contributed to the same serial (vols. iv. and v.) a number of 

 interesting letters on the general aspects of the vegetation of the parts visited. 



Hegewisch and Muehlenpfordt, two Germans, collected at about the same time, and 

 some of their plants were described by Chamisso and Schlechtendal with Schiede and 

 Deppe's. Dr. Schiede settled in Mexico, where he practised medicine up till his death 

 from typhus in 1836. 



The Voyage of E. M.S. 'Blossom.' — This expedition, under the command of Captain 

 F. W. Beechey, touched at San Bias in December 1827, and remained until the following 

 February ; and Mr. Lay, the naturalist, spent a long time at Tepic, about fifty-four miles 

 inland, where he made a collection of dried plants, containing most of the new species 

 described by Hooker and Arnott in their ' Botany ' of the voyage, throughout which 

 Jalisco is misprinted Talisco. Later they proceeded to Mazatlan and Acapulco, where, 

 however, they staid only a very short time. Mr. Collie and other officers of the ship 

 assisted in collecting, and in our Enumeration sometimes the names Lay and Collie 

 are coupled ; but more frequently the plants of this expedition are assigned to Beechey, 

 in consequence of their having been so labelled in the Hookerian herbarium. The 

 Kew set is not quite complete. 



George Ure Skinner. — This gentleman first went to Guatemala in 1831, and he 

 speedily gave a new zest and impetus to the cultivation of orchids in England by the 

 introduction of living plants of a large number of very showy kinds. He was the second 

 son of the Very Rev. John Skinner, Dean of Dunkeld and Dunblane, and was born in 

 1804*. Skinner's energies, outside of his business, were mainly devoted to orchids, 

 especially to the exportation of living plants to England, but he did not neglect other 

 subjects, having been the first to send many of the peculiar Guatemalan birds to this 

 country. He also greatly aided naturalists who visited Guatemala during his long, 

 though often interrupted, residence in the country. There is a small general collection 

 of dried plants collected by him in the Kew Herbarium ; it is probable, however, that 

 this is not the first set, which may be in the Lindley herbarium at Cambridge ; still, he 

 concerned himself more with living than dried plants. It is estimated that he intro- 

 duced living plants of nearly one hundred species of orchids — a great achievement in 

 those early days of plant-importation. A large proportion of them was previously 

 unknown to science. It would be out of place to enumerate here the many gorgeous 

 species Skinner discovered, but it may be mentioned that he was the first to introduce 

 a living plant of an Odontoglossum into England. In 1866 he decided to retire from 

 business, and started for Guatemala, with the intention of winding up his affairs. 

 But at Panama, on his outward journey, he was smitten with yellow fever and died. 



* Gardener's Chronicle, 1867, p. 180. 



