132 APPENDIX. 



the impossibility of deciding whether certain plants of this expedition were gathered 

 north or south of the present boundary between the United States and Mexico. 



The Voyage of H.M.S. 'Herald, 7 — Under the command of Captain Henry Kellett, 

 this was accomplished during the years 1845 to 1851. Dr. Berthold Seemann, a native 

 of Hanover *, was appointed naturalist to the expedition, on the recommendation of 

 Sir William Hooker, in succession to Thomas Edmonston, who was killed in Ecuador 

 by the accidental discharge of a rifle ; and he joined the ship at Panama in 

 January 1847. Seemann proved an industrious collector, a careful observer, and a 

 fluent writer in a language that was not his own. The countries within our limits 

 explored by him were Panama, including Veraguas, and North-western Mexico. As 

 we reproduce his sketches of the general features of the vegetation of these regions in 

 another place, it is unnecessary to enter into further particulars here. Suflice it to 

 say, that he is our sole authority for Sinaloa, Durango, and other parts of North-western 

 Mexico visited by him. After writing the botany of this expedition, Seemann proceeded, 

 in 1860, on a mission of botanical exploration to the Fiji Islands, the results of which 

 he likewise published, though at considerable loss to himself. Subsequently he visited 

 Panama and Nicaragua several times in connexion with various commercial enterprises, 

 and although very fully occupied with business, he contrived to work a little at botany, 

 hoping to return to scientific research at a future period ; but he fell a victim to fever 

 in Nicaragua in October 1871 at the age of forty-six. The first set of the Panama and 

 Mexican collections is at Kew, where Seemann, assisted by Sir Joseph Hooker and Mr. 

 A. A. Black, then Curator of the Herbarium, elaborated his "Botany of the Voyage of 

 the ' Herald,' " and not at the British Museum, if that is what is intended by " study- 

 set " in a statement published in the ' Journal of Botany ' f, where we are somewhat 

 severely admonished for not going there to consult this and other collections. But this 

 matter has already been explained in our Preface. 



With regard to the localities cited in our Enumeration for Seemann's plants, they are 

 mostly taken from the labels accompanying the specimens in the Kew Herbarium, and 

 unfortunately rarely quite accord with those given by Seemann himself in the Botany 

 of the < Herald.' As Eadlkofer has pointed out J, these discrepancies are often serious 

 and perplexing; and we find, in consequence, that we have omitted some species 

 recorded from Panama in Seemann's book and included others which appear to have 

 been collected further south. 



Balph Tate, now Professor of Geology at Melbourne, made a small collection of 

 plants at Chontales, Nicaragua, at about the same date as Seemann, and perhaps in 



* Journal of Botany (Trimen's), 1872, p. 1 ; Biography and portrait. 



t J. B. in ' Journal of Botany,' 1880, p. 90. 



t Monographie der Sapindaceen-Gattung Serjania, p. 55. 



